I. The Challenge of Teshuvah and the Promise of Teshuvah Me-Ahavah

Man’s struggle for self-transformation—his never-ending battle for spiritual growth—often feels as unsatisfying as it is ennobling. He grasps at the rungs of moral elevation, guided by the familiar maps of teshuvah, yet even assiduous adherence can leave him plagued by doubt. His recognition and profound regret of past misdeeds may be sincere, and his commitment to avoid previous paths resolute; still, as Yom Kippur approaches, the exhaustiveness of effort does not yield confidence. Can one ever say with surety that he has truly repented?

Rav Kook captures this unease in the introduction to Orot HaTeshuvah: teshuvah is at once “the easiest commandment”—for a stirring of the heart already counts—and “the most difficult,” for it has not yet been fully effectuated in life (Orot HaTeshuvah, intro). Unlike mitzvot that are performed by deed or recitation, this commandment’s fulfillment resists the testimony of eye and ear. Precisely this intangibility, Rav Soloveitchik suggested, explains Maimonides’ reluctance to list teshuvah itself as a mitzvah, choosing instead its verbal correlate, viduy(confession) (see Hilkhot Teshuvah 1:1, and R. Soloveitchik’s analysis).

With so crucial an essential of Judaism residing beyond our concretized perceptions, it is no wonder that the spiritual aspirant lives with uncomfortable insecurity. Into this anxiety breaks the Talmud’s tantalizing promise: there is a teshuvah beyond teshuvah, a return capable not only of atonement but of transformation—indeed, of retroactive conversion (Yoma 86b). We need not be satisfied with the gracious commutation of z’donot (intentional sins) into sh’gagot (unwitting sins). We are told of teshuvah me-ahavah—repentance motivated by love—which turns intentional misdeeds into zechuyot, merits (Yoma 86b).

Yet the penitent greets this concept with ambivalence: exhilarated by its promise, tortured by its distance. Teshuvah mi-yirah (repentance from fear) has recognizable steps in the poskim and the ba’alei musar; teshuvah me-ahavah, by contrast, is known to us chiefly by name. Its instructions seem cloaked in mystery; we are left with a luminous phrase, whose promise is matched by an enigmatic concealment.

The Minchat Chinukh whets the appetite further by attributing an additional quality to teshuvah me-ahavah. The Talmud speaks of four divisions of atonement (arba’ah chillukei kapparah): sometimes teshuvah alone expiates; sometimes it requires Yom Kippur; sometimes afflictions; and, for the gravest sins, even death (Yoma 85b). The Minchat Chinukhsuggests a “shortcut”: teshuvah me-ahavah can grant immediate atonement, bypassing the four stages (mitzvah 364). He adduces a Yerushalmi in which Prophecy declares that the sinner must die, yet God Himself says, “Let him repent, and he will be forgiven”—apparently even for a capital-level wrong. Since this seems to contravene the four-fold scheme, it must be speaking of a qualitatively different teshuvah—namely, teshuvah me-ahavah.

Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, the Netziv, adds a decisive touch in his biblical commentary: teshuvahfrom fear is, at bottom, self-focused, driven by a desire to escape punishment; teshuvah from love is God-focused, seeking closeness to Him (Ha‘amek Davar to Deut. 30:11). Hence its towering advantage: teshuvah mi-yirah, caught in human psychology, remains prey to doubt; teshuvah me-ahavah, grounded in attachment to the Almighty, grants a rare confidence and security—penitence that endures, lifting the penitent to a new spiritual plane.

Thus our interest is fully captured. The capacity to transform sin into merit, the promise of bypassing the arba’ah chillukei kapparah, and the possibility of deep confidence in spiritual acquisition fuse into a single yearning: to understand and to live this wondrous ideal.

II. Talmud Torah as Teshuvah

A challenge posed by some acharonim to a comment of Nachmanides leads us out of our sense of utter directionless. “For this mitzvah,” declares the Torah, “is not too wondrous for you, nor is it far” (Deut. 30:11). Rashi reads the verse generically, as embracing the corpus of Torah and mitzvot (Rashi ad loc.). Nachmanides, joined by Abravanel and Sforno, reads it specifically as referring to the mitzvah of teshuvah.

There is, however, a problem. Chazal already assigned the verse to the study of Torah (Eruvin 55a). How, then, may Nachmanides and the other rishonim apply it to teshuvah? The Netziv proposes that the verse can indeed encompass both talmud Torah and teshuvah(Ha‘amek Davar, ibid.). R. Aharon Kotler, and others among contemporary authorities, offer a more radical harmony: there are times when talmud Torah is itself teshuvah.

This key illuminates earlier sources, as R. Shlomo Wahrman notes in She’arit Yosef (IV, #26). The Sifrei to Ha’azinu glosses “Lekach” (“My teaching shall drop as rain”) as Torah (Deut. 32:2), then reads Hosea’s exhortation (14:3) “Take with you words and return to God” likewise as a reference to talmud Torah.  Though Hosea’s verse seems to address teshuvah, the identification stands—if talmud Torah and teshuvahcan coincide.

The Talmud (Berakhot 16a) also probes the juxtaposition (Num. 24:6) of “tents” and “rivers,” concluding that just as rivers lift one from impurity to purity—mikveh—so do “tents” elevate the guilty to merit. Rashi explains: the “tents” are batei midrashot; Torah study is a mikveh, purifying Israel from their impurities. Again, if study itself is an instrument of return, the text reads plainly.

What, then, is the precise role of talmud Torah in teshuvah? Beyond the familiar components—recognition, remorse, resolve—what does study contribute? R. Wahrman, together with R. Yaakov Betzalel Zolty (Mishnat Ya’avetz, O.C. 54), suggests that we have here the secret of teshuvah me-ahavah.

Again, there is ample precedence of such indications in earlier literature. The Midrash identifies devotion to the Oral Torah—with its intricacies and demands—as a supreme expression of love of God.

Maimonides contrasts in Hilkhot Teshuvah (10:5), takes the time to expand briefly on the concept of Torah study for its own sake as opposed to study for alternative reasons, defining study for its own sake as a study driven by “a love of the Master of the world who commanded [study]”, and concludes with a statement of the importance of all types of study, in the hopes that the eventual result will be study for its own sake. It is odd that the Rambam, with his legendary precision of order and organization, would expand on this concept in Hilkhot Teshuvah, while in its apparently more appropriate home, Hilkhot Talmud Torah (3:5), he refers to it in a much more terse manner.

Perhaps the depths of the Maimonides’ intentions are now clear. In Hilkhot Talmud Torah, where the concern is merely the fulfillment of the mitzvah of Torah study, Maimonides felt no need to expand on the distinction between Torah for its own sake and other motivations for study because both effect a realization of the commandment of Torah study. However, the utilization of talmud Torah for the purposes of teshuvah require more than mere fulfillment of the technical talmud Torah; it requires a study motivated by pure love. Therefore Maimonides deals with the distinction in Hilkhot Teshuvah, because it is there that the differentiation is crucial. (Rabbi Wahrman quotes Rabbi Nachman David Londinsky to this effect.)

To apply this truth, we must understand how Torah study effects teshuvah. The realms of teshuvah and talmud Torah intersect on two levels.

1) Shared goals. Sin degrades and distances. It creates a void between man and God—not only psychologically, but metaphysically. The sinner tells himself God is not watching; eventually, he believes it. When he awakens, he longs to bridge the very gap he once courted; from the bottom of the abyss, he reaches upward with new urgency. His immediate method is teshuvah; his ultimate goal is closeness to the Father he had spurned.

The scholar’s goal overlaps: he, too, seeks proximity to God. His method differs: he traverses the revealed word—Torah—reaching back to Sinai. Distinct paths, common destination. When love propels the penitent, his path converges with the scholar’s: talmud Torahbecomes the most effective vehicle for teshuvah.

With the Temple destroyed, the last vestige of the sacrificial order became “u’neshalemah parim sefateinu—our lips shall substitute for bulls” (Hoshea 14:3). Since we cannot offer sacrifices, we learn about them. On this basis arose the daily recital of biblical and mishnaic passages about offerings—viewed by at least one Rishon as a biblical obligation. The Talmud itself portrays God advising Abraham: when the people cannot bring offerings, involvement with their study parashiyot will suffice.

This arrangement spurred halakhic speculation: if one were stranded without a shofar on Rosh Hashanah, might learning its laws discharge the obligation? The Chofetz Chaim, in the introduction to Likutei Halakhoton the laws of sacrifices, limits the substitution to korbanot; others disagreed. Why the distinction? Perhaps because sacrifices were not ordinary mitzvot; they were the means of worship, the modality of meeting God. In later generations, only talmud Torahcould approximate that relationship—not as a substitute performance of the commandment, but as an alternate connection, an initiated conversation where the Temple’s destruction had interrupted it.

2) Gradual transformation. The penitent seeks not merely to clear his name but to become different: to transform consciousness, refine character, and elevate being. Immersion in Torah lishmah—in constant contact with the holy—cannot leave one untouched. Intellectual rigor refines moral contours; the direction of one’s thinking fine-tunes the deeper elements of personality. Religious understanding sharpens spiritual perception. The longer one lives within Torah’s categories, the more one’s instincts come to align with them. In this way, talmud Torah and teshuvah walk hand in hand, nourishing one another.

III. Teshuvah as Transformation

We return to the core Talmudic distinction. Teshuvah mi-yirah converts intentional sins into inadvertent ones; teshuvah me-ahavah converts intentional sins into merits (Yoma 86b). Rav Soloveitchik explained: one penitent regards his past as a mistake to be erased; he seeks only to start anew. This is teshuvah mi-yirah: the past is reclassified as sh’gagah, and accountability is lifted. Another penitent, however, does not wish to discard the past. Grounded in ahavah, he wants to do something positive with life; he harvests the painful wisdom of failures and converts them into guides. His sins do not merely vanish; they become assets in the service of God.

Such teshuvah me-ahavah cannot rest on raw emotion alone. It requires deliberation, mature insight, and a developed consciousness—the fruits of intensive Torah study. Without that disciplined re-education of mind and heart, the instinct to “make good” on the past lacks reliable compass. Talmud Torah provides it.

The Midrash deepens this portrait. After his sin and expulsion, Adam meets Cain, himself in the aftermath of tragedy. Cain reports that he has done teshuvah. Adam, astonished, responds with the Psalm of Shabbat. What is the connection? Rav Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht of Kerem B’Yavneh explained: An earlier comment of the Midrash dealt with the perplexing language of one of the verses describing the creation of the world. At the very end of the process of creation, we are informed that God finished his work “on the seventh day”, although we know that God too rested on that day. The Midrash offers a parable to explain: Imagine a carpenter slamming a hammer into a board, lifting his hammer and dropping it, lifting and dropping, over and over again. God’s work before the seventh day is comparable to the lifting of the hammer, an active, purposeful movement; and his creation for the seventh day itself is compared to the passive, almost reflexive action of dropping the hammer.

So with teshuvah: it is the subtle re-creation of the self. Externally, the body is unchanged; to the casual eye, nothing has happened. Inwardly, an entirely new human being is being formed. That depth of transformation—beneath the surface—is sustained only by the steady inculcation of spiritual values that extended contact with Torah engenders.

This necessity of sustained study appears when the Talmud teaches that chilul Hashem (desecration of God’s Name) is so grave that there is no atonement in this world (Yoma 86a). Rabbenu Yonah, in Sha’arei Teshuvah, holds out one hope: prolonged involvement in Torah. R. Yitzchak Hutner explains: chilul Hashemwarps a person’s very sense of life’s seriousness; only the sustained realignment of the Torah can recalibrate such skewed perspective.

This leads to a final refinement: ahavah in Pirkei Avotis praised when it is “not dependent on a thing”—ahavah she’einah teluyah badavar (Avot 5:16). The Yachin explains this as almost purely instinctive love, akin to love of an idea or of a discipline. To relate to Torah in this way is deeply laudable. The Sochachover Rebbe (Avnei Nezer), in the introduction to Eglei Tal, addresses those who feel guilty for the joy they feel in learning, fearing it detracts from lishmah. He reassures them: when one genuinely delights in Torah, one has reached the highest form of study lishmah.

In this light we can gather the pieces. Teshuvah me-ahavah asks for more than avoidance of punishment; it asks for re-creation—of instinct, of reflex, of love. Torah study is the workshop of that re-creation. It supplies the grammar and music of God’s world; it restores the conversation that sacrifices once embodied; it guides the penitent to harvest wisdom from failure; it slowly re-forms the contours of the soul.

And so, returning to the opening anxieties: the mitzvah that eludes our senses can nonetheless yield confidence. The confidence does not come from a flash of feeling, but from a life quietly, stubbornly refashioned by Torah. The “bypass” of the arba’ah chillukei kapparah is not a trick; it is the natural consequence of a penitent whose love of God has become his mind’s native language. His z’donot turn to zechuyot not by magic but by metabolism: the very energies once misdirected now fuel service. What was darkness becomes light’s contrast; the abyss becomes the launching point for ascent.

The aspiration, then, is to a sensitivity refined to the point where one feels an automatic identification, an instinctual love, with the values he encounters in his Torah study. The hope, then, is that teshuvah and talmud Torah will walk hand in hand, each enhancing the other and nourishing the other’s growth, providing the security of spiritual accomplishment as the impetus for a glorious future of ascendances on the ladder of spiritual and moral greatness.

Rashi, in commenting on the verse “Arur makeh re’ehu baseter” (Deut. 27:24), which curses one who strikes his fellow “in secret”, tells us this refers to lashon hara, which, apparently, by definition takes place behind a person’s back. While there is much to analyze in terms of Rashi’s source or basis for this interpretation (compare the comments of Siftei Chakhamim, Malbim, and R. Samson Raphael Hirsch here, and Kili Yakar¸ Ex 2:13), what is more striking is the practical implication: that when the subject is present, the offense is not lashon hara at all.

This seems extremely difficult. One would assume that while it is certainly prohibited to speak badly of another who is not present and to “stab them in the back”, to do so in his presence would only compound the offense: not only is the subject disparaged, but he is humiliated as well, and humiliation itself is an egregious transgression, described in the Talmud as akin to murder. Accordingly, the Chafetz Chaim (Hil. LH 3:1) rules that lashon hara spoken in front of the subject is not less severe, but in fact significantly worse.

Yet, the Talmud records the enigmatic statement: “Any matter said in front of the subject is not lashon hara” (Arakhin 15b). Taken at face value, this seems to contradict both intuition and the ruling of major authorities. Some commentaries resolve the difficulty by limiting the statement, suggesting that it represents a minority view not accepted in practice; this appears to be the position of Maimonides (Hilkhot De’ot 7:5; see Kessef Mishneh, and see also the analysis of Emek HaLashon, 40, and R. Meshulam David Soloveichik, Shiurei Rabbenu Meshulam David HaLevi, Arakhin 15b.  Maharei Bruna, # 38, asserts that the view is disputed and not accepted as practical halakhah. See also R. Shmuel ben Elkanah of Altunah, Responsa Mekom Shmuel, I, 91, and see as well R. Yaakov Etlinger, Arukh LeNeir, Yevamot 105b, s.v bi’otah, and R. Chaim Yosef David Azulai, Resp. Chaim She’al II, 43:6, and Kodesh Yisrael, 7.  Note also R. Avraham Toker, in the journal Knesset Yisrael Zikhron Mordechai I, pp. 46-49.)

Others have suggested interpretations of the statement in light of pointed theories of lashon hara as a philosophical concept involving the abuse of speech. In these views, it would have to be assumed that speaking badly in the presence of the subject is certainly an offense, and an egregious one at that. However, it is not classified as lashon hara; it is an act of humiliating the other, and likely several other offenses, but perhaps lashon hara has a specific meaning which is not applicable under these circumstances.

Thus, Rabbi Eliezer of Metz (Sefer Yereim 191 [41]), interpreting the verse “walking with slanders, they are bronze and iron” (Jer. 6:28), explains that the peddler of gossip is duplicitous, with two faces: one of “bronze,” glimmering and pleasant, and one of “iron,” sharp and deadly. Lashon hara, then, requires this duplicity—the two-faced friendliness in the subject’s presence, masking the hostility expressed behind his back. When the attack is open, the sin remains grave, but it is not lashon hara.

The famed rabbinic philosopher Rabbi Judah Lowe (1520 - 1609), known as the Maharal of Prague, posited a theory of lashon hara that also excludes speech in front of the subject (Netivot Olam, Netiv HaLashon, ch. 7). While his language is somewhat difficult, he appears to be maintaining the following:lashon hara is directed specifically to speech as a unique tool of harm that can be perpetrated from a distance. In the presence of one's subject, there are other ways in which one can directly engage his target; thus, the importance of speech is less emphasized. Also, presumably of significance is the fact that the subject can respond to the allegations.

The Chafetz Chaim (klal 2, in n2) and others challenged the Maharal's position by noting the central story of Miriam's lashon hara against Moses. According to at least one midrashic opinion, Moses was present at the time. Apparently, this did not change the classification of the conversation aslashon hara.

In response to that objection, a number of authors, including some modern intellectual descendants of the Maharal's general philosophical approach, asserted a distinction to support his position. They maintain that there are two forms of lashon hara under discussion. One is where there are objective negative facts that do not involve assessments or judgment, and the statement is a direct factual allegation. In that case, the presence of the subject would counteract the classification of that revelation as lashon hara. However, when the primary act oflashon hara is a negative judgment of the subject, a failure to fulfill the obligation to judge favorably, then the speech is considered lashon hara even if the victim is present, and that was the case with Miriam and Moses: no information was being conveyed, but rather Miriam was negatively assessing Moses’ undisputed behavior.

(See R. Yitzchak Hutner, Pachad Yitzchak, Shavuot, ma’amar 3, as well as Iggerot, p. 268, and Sefer Zikaron LeMaran Ba’al HaPachad Yitzchak, p. 333-334; R. Moshe Miernik, in Torat HaAdam LeAdam, V, pp 178 - 186 (and see as well his essay in R. Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht, Asufat Ma’arakhot, BeMidbar, pp. 169-179); R. Moshe Schapiro, in BeYad HaLashon, pp. 373-379. Also compare R. Ephraim Natan Rothchild, in the journal Kol HaTorah, vol. LXIV, pp. 157-164 A similar approach can be found in Zera Chaim, pp. 318- 319, distinguishing between truth and falsehood. A more expansive version of this approach, in the context of a broader analysis of the lashon hara prohibition, authored by R. Ephraim Natan Rothschild, appeared in the journal Kol HaTorah, LXIV, pp. 157-164. A critique of this approach, and an alternative, can be found in R. Avraham Gurewitz, Ohr Avraham to Hilkhot Taniyiot, Kuntres Seder HaKinot, #2.)

Others suggest that the story of Moses is actually a proof to the Maharal's position. Their assumption is that the main factor is the ability of the victim to respond. However, since Moses is described by the Torah in this context as exceedingly humble, the implication is that this constitutes a unique situation where the victim would not respond, and therefore his presence does not mitigate the lashon hara, an exception to the general rule (R Dovid Kohn, Harchavat Gevul Ya’avetz, pp. 92-93).

The point, however, is mostly theoretical, as it is universally agreed that speaking negatively in the presence of the subject at the very least constitutes a different prohibition, one that is very serious in its own right. Further, as we have seen, many authorities including Maimonides and the Chafetz Chaim do not acknowledge any distinction in practice as far as the prohibition of lashon hara is concerned, and one midrashic opinion asserts that the story of Miriam includes a lesson as to how the transgression oflashon hara is intensified if the subject is present (Yalkut Shimoni, Parashat Metzora, remez 565).

The conceptual discussion, however, is revealing, especially when set alongside another enigmatic Talmudic statement: “Any matter spoken of in front of three (apei telata) is not lashon hara” (Arachin 15b). Introducing the factor of publicity into lashon hara has a paradoxical effect. From the perspective of the speaker, the more listeners, the greater the sin: it is bad to disparage before one person, worse before many (as the Chafetz Chaim emphasizes). Yet from the perspective of the information itself, the more public the knowledge, the less harm in repeating it. Thus, the larger the audience, the greater the transgression; but as the item becomes common knowledge, repeating it seems to lose some of its sting. However, there are many competing interpretations in the commentaries, and how this mitigates the prohibition is the subject of much debate. Some authorities insist that all interpretations must be accounted for in practice, such that the supposed leniency has little real application (as the Chafetz Chaim writes).

The Tosafists maintain that the context of these statements is not the conveying of actual disparaging information. Rather, the scenario being addressed is one of a speaker who wishes to make a statement that is somewhat ambiguous, and could be interpreted by the listeners as either negative or positive. The speaker intends for the words to be accepted as positive; otherwise, the statements would be clearly forbidden. However, a concern still exists that the listeners will not grasp this fact and will take the statements as negative. Accordingly, it might be maintained that the words should not be said.

It is here where the presence of the public or of the subject is significant. If the statement was being made in private, indeed the listener may be unsure as to how to interpret the message. However, when the speaker knows that his words will be spread publicly, and particularly that the subject himself is now hearing or will later hear them, the listener will take that context as indicative that the message is a positive one.

The Chafetz Chaim poses two models to understand the nature of this license. In the first model, it might be that this atmosphere serves as a "check" on the speaker, who will limit himself to a positive message because of who is listening. In this understanding, the concern is not really how the listeners will interpret the message but more on the possibility that the ambiguous nature of the content will allow the speaker, consciously or subconsciously, to insert negativity into the presentation. In the second model, the license is based on the premise that the presence of the others serves as a clarification of the speaker’s intent. Accordingly, the listeners will understand the message to be a positive one and accept it in that manner.

In the modern era, these assumptions hardly apply. Speech today is routinely shared “in front of three”—indeed, in front of millions—through the internet and social media. The subject is often aware, and the words are preserved indefinitely. Yet the presence of the subject or the publicity of the message does nothing to temper negativity. On the contrary, it often magnifies and legitimizes hostility.

The debates of the Talmud and its commentaries illuminate the subtle dynamics of speech: secrecy, presence, publicity, duplicity, and interpretation. In our time, those dynamics are radically reshaped by the scope and permanence of communication, and by the “online disinhibition effect”. The ethical and halakhic implications are profound. Speech has always had the power to harm. Today, that power is exponentially greater, and the responsibility to wield it with care all the more urgent. We are living in a different world.

As the Chovot HaLevavot and others emphasize, hakarat ha-tov is the foundational principle in Judaism, necessary for a successful relationship with the rest of the Torah. According to many, this is also the underlying value of the commandment to honor one's father and mother, and the reason that commandment occupies such a prominent place in the Ten Commandments.

Hakarat ha-tov is about more than manners; as a direct translation indicates, it refers to an internal "recognition" of how one has benefited. As such, it is not tied into the benefactor having provided kindness willingly or selflessly, as can be seen from the Torah's commandment not to hate the Egyptian who provided hospitality for the Jews, even as they were enslaved (Deut. 23:8). Accordingly, the Talmud (Bava Kamma 92b) understands such recognition should be extended even to inanimate objects, ruling that one who has drank water from a well should not throw water into that well. The Shitah Mekubbetzet understands from here that one should not even have thoughts of disrespect towards one from whom one has benefitted.

As Nachmanides notes, even the smallest amount counts as Bikkurim, just as even the smallest field triggers an obligation of Pe'ah (Pe'ah 3:6). R. Simcha Zissel Broide, the Rosh Yeshiva of Chevron (Sam Derech), notes how this displays the fantastic potential of a minimal expression of gratitude: from this small launching pad will come the broad reflection upon all the blessings of Jewish history that will unfold (see also his longer essay at the end of the volume).

The verse continues, "Veyarashata veyashavta bah," teaching, as Rashi notes, that the commandment of Bikkurim applies only once the Jews enter the Land. As such, a comment of the Sifrei is difficult to understand: "Perform this commandment, so that you can come into the Land." You can't get the job unless you already have experience; you can't get experience without having the job. It would seem impossible to fulfill the commandment before entering the Land, and thereby earn such entry, if it is not yet applicable.

A number of suggestions are offered to resolve this difficulty. R. Shimon Schwab posits that "Aretz" in this context refers to the Temple, which could perhaps resolve other textual difficulties. Some, such as the Steipler, read the Sifrei to be saying that the Jews should understand that they are entering the Land so that they can fulfill the commandments, rather than enjoy the fruits for hedonistic reasons, a theme highlighted by Bikkurim.

This is also asserted by R. Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal (author of Em HaBanim Semechah), who explained thusly the juxtaposition to the commandment to remember the attack of Amalek at the end of Parashat Ki Tetze. Amalek, who attempted to dampen the religious enthusiasm of the Jewish people, is further defeated by the eager embrace of the commandments, especially Bikkurim, which is associated with joy.

It might also be suggested that the reference to a performance of "this commandment" prior to entering the Land is to its underlying value rather than to its actual details. It is a mindset of hakarat ha-tov, and an appreciation for the divine providence that has brought them to this point, that will gain them entry into the Holy Land.

The performance of the commandment itself raises a further question of detail. The verse commands "taking" and "bringing" the fruits (26:2, "velakachta, vehevetah"), but there is a dispute whether this refers to taking from the field at the time of harvesting (the view of Rashbam) or from the house to the Temple (Nachmanides; Rabbeinu Tam, in Tosafot, Bava Batra 82a, s.v. batzran; see Meshech Chochmah).

R. Elisha Horowitz, in his work Bei Chiya, suggests the difference of opinion may hinge on some additional possibilities as to the purpose of Bikkurim, as collected by the Abravanel. One theory is that the commandment is to sublimate one's personal desires to the dedication towards holiness. If so, it would make sense to apply the verse at the time of harvesting, before the fruits have been brought to the house. Another theory is that once the farmer has reached a moment of contentment, he is asked to recollect all of the travails of the past. In that case, it is the time at home that is the more likely subject of the verse.

The declaration that accompanies the fruits opens with the words "Arami oved avi" (26:5). These verses are well known from their prominent placement in the Haggadah; Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Chametz U'Matzah 7:1-4) writes that one should ideally go on at length with this section. One would have thought that verses from the first half of the eponymous book of Exodus, directly describing the Exodus from Egypt, would have been better candidates.

However, as R. Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht and others display, it is the "aniyah" of Bikkurim that serves perfectly the goals of the lechem oni, "she'onim alav devarim harbeh" (Pesachim 36a). It is no accident that one word, hoda'ah, encapsulates both gratitude and acknowledgment; to do the latter is necessarily to do the former. To acknowledge, moreover, is to acknowledge fully; to bring to the moment the full sweep of history that proceeded, with all of its challenges, tears, and devastations, and allow it to contrast with the triumph of "today", hayom.

Indeed, "HaYom", to be the acknowledgment it must be, must compress within itself all of Jewish history, and constantly renew, so that the Jew can joyously stand with his first fruits, and sit at his Passover table, and truly "respond" (aniyah) as the moment demands.

Once again, the juxtaposition to Amalek is relevant. The attack of Amalek has failed; the cynical attempt to make Jewish history meaningless, happenstance, irrelevant, has itself become historical artifact; it is Israel that endures and renews.

The section closes with the charge "vesamachta bechol ha-tov" (26:11). Human nature is the "hedonic treadmill"; the more blessings one experiences, the more one feels one needs. It is, therefore, especially at the time of harvest that the commandment to "Rejoice in all the good" that has been given becomes necessary (see also R. Mordechai Gifter, Pirkei Torah).

Given what will follow in the portion, it is an ominous warning; the rebuke there is attributed precisely to service rendered without joy and gladness of heart in the midst of plenty (28:47), which is to say, to the failure of the very recognition that Bikkurim is meant to instill. We are reminded first, though, that it does not have to be that way. Preserving the recognition of God's grace makes these same words a self-fulfilling promise.

I have to confess, I'm great.

Certainly an unusual sentence, but no more jarring than the phrase the Rabbis use to describe the ceremony near the beginning of this week's Torah reading. When offering ma’aser, a special formula is to be recited; this recitation is referred to in the Talmud with the term ‘vidui ma’aser’ (see Sotah 32b; Megilah20b), literally, the "confession of tithes". This phrase seems out of place. Vidui is conventionally translated as confession, which in turn is commonly defined as “acknowledging sin or negative information”. However, from a reading of the verses, the sense that emerges is anything but: “I have removed the holy things from the house, and I have also given it to the Levite, to the proselyte, to the orphan, and to the widow, according to whatever commandment You commanded me; I have not transgressed any of your commandments, and I have not forgotten; I have not eaten of it in my intense mourning, I did not consume it in a state of contamination, and I did not give of it for the needs of the dead; I have hearkened to the voice of Hashem, my God; I have acted according to everything You commanded me” (Deut. 26:13-14). Is the word vidui, then, meant to be ironic, sarcasm from the Rabbis?

Some interpret viduy here not as a confession of wrongdoing but as an acknowledgment or expression of gratitude (hoda'ah). The Sforno suggests that it contains a hidden confession of the sin of the golden calf, which led to the first-borns ceding their status to the tribe of Levi; while the Minchat Chinukh (#607) believes the confession is for not having given the tithes earlier.

An additional explanation, cited by the Pardes Yosef HaChadash in the name of the Ziditchover Rebbe and the Sefat Emet, is that the viduy is a confession for pride itself. The very act of declaring one's perfection and boasting about one's good deeds can lead to ga'avah (arrogance), which is a serious sin. The paradoxical Viduy Ma'aser forces a person to confront this hubris, making the declaration a vehicle for repentance.

The Netziv adds a layer to this, explaining that while a person may strive for perfection, they cannot avoid minor transgressions like "the dust of lashon hara" (indirect negative speech), of which the Talmud says everyone is guilty. The

viduy serves as an acknowledgment of this subtle, almost inescapable flaw.

A further interpretation is offered by R. Natan Gestetner in his writings, who suggests that the Viduy Ma'aser is essentially a checklist. By going over the list of positive deeds one has done, it forces one to be honest with himself about his accomplishments. If he claims to have done something he hasn't, this self-misrepresentation will force him to correct his behavior, thus becoming a process of teshuvah. This is similar to a point made by the Oznayim LaTorah, who notes that exaggerating one's accomplishments creates a greater sense of responsibility to ensure that one's "resume" is accurate, as it would be dangerous to claim things that are not true.

To further address this issue, it is worth reexamining the idea of vidui. Maimonides, in beginning his codification of the laws of teshuvah, writes that if one violates any principle of the Torah, when he is ready to repent, it is a mitzvah for him to do “vidui”.

This formulation troubled many commentators, in that it appears as if Maimonides, who devotes ten chapters of his Mishneh Torah to the laws of teshuvah, does not even recognize teshuvah as a mitzvah. Some indeed assumed this to be the case, that Maimonides understands only vidui to be a mitzvah, but not teshuvah itself (see Minchat Chinukh, 364, and Avodat Melekh). Rav Soloveitchik considered this to be an impossible position; the assumption that teshuvah is an obligation is central to Torah as a whole see Deut. 30:1-2) and especially to the Yamim Noraim period.

Maimonides’ wording, then, reflects not that teshuvah is not obligatory, but that it is expressed through vidui. This is because teshuvah, in reality, is not an action that one can perform or not perform, but an internal mindset (see the beginning of R. Kook’s Orot HaTeshuvah). A mitzvah must be directed at a performable action, not at a personality trait, emotion, or mindset. Vidui, then, as a defined action, is the stand-in for teshuvah, an action that can be commanded; and when it is performed, when one forces himself to confront his own sins and inadequacies, it is hoped that he will then be moved toward the internal change that is in itself teshuvah.

With this perspective, it may be possible to revisit the concept of vidui ma’aser. True, the vehicle to yeshivah is very frequently acknowledgment of misdeeds, the antidote to the arrogance, self-satisfaction or self-delusion that often stands in the way of change. However, there is another impediment to growth that can be equally pernicious. Often, we are held back from changing because we believe, quite simply, that we are not capable of any better. Yes, we readily acknowledge our shortcomings; in fact, we are slow to see anything else and recognize no possibility of greater heights.

In that circumstance, traditional “confession” does little to move us toward spiritual growth. However, the Rabbis teach us that there is another form of the vehicle known as vidui: one that forces us to admit that there are times when we do fulfill commandments completely, when we are capable of accomplishing everything set before us; when we can declare “I have hearkened to the voice of Hashem, my God; I have acted according to everything You commanded me”. If we are capable then, we are capable other times as well. The excuse that no better can be asked of us loses its strength. We are forced to recognize that the bar can be set higher. At times, it is this awareness that can be the greatest impetus toward growth; it is this function that vidui ma’aser provides.

As we approach Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, we confess our sins and we hope the awareness of wrongdoing will prevent repeat offenses. But at the same time, we focus on our untapped potential as well, and we use that awareness to push us farther. It is our mission, at this time, to remove the influence of the Satan not only from “behind us”, but from “in front of us” as well.

Happiness is both a vital goal and an elusive one. Happiness, assuming that is an adequate translation of the word Simchah, occupies a crucial dual role in Parashat Ki Tavo. Towards the beginning of this week’s Torah reading, the directive appears, V’Samachta b’khol ha-tov, “and you shall rejoice in every good thing” (Deut. 26:11).

More ominously, Simchah reappears towards the end of the parashah following the devastating litany of imprecations threatened to the Jewish people should they fail to uphold their Divine mission. These consequences would unfold, we are told “Tachat asher lo avad’ta et Hashem Elokekha b’Simchah u’vtuv levav me-rov kol, “because you have not served the Lord your God with happiness and gladness of heart, for abundance of all things” (28:47).

It is not surprising that, like so many verses in the Torah, this one has multiple interpretations. Unlike those other verses, however, the stakes are unusually high: these interpretations must be ready to assert that their understanding is so all-encompassing, it can explain how it is that the failure implied in this verse is catastrophic enough to explain consequences of such magnitude, somehow all connected to the attribute of joy. Reading the curses of Ki Tavo, one would think that it is egregious evil that brings them about; attributing them to a lack of joy is a shocking message that requires more than homiletic skill to interpret. One is tempted to validate, in this case, the characteristic contrary reading of the rebbe of Kotzk: you did not serve God, and did so gleefully, with malice and spiteful intent. There are other variants of this as well: you did not serve God because of your joy and self satisfaction (Meshekh Chokhmah); or you did not serve him, despite your happiness and lack of want; or inversely, that you failed to serve God, and exacerbated the problem by failing to allow that to detract from your comfort (Pri Megadim in Teivat Gema).

To most, however, the literal translation is correct; the failure is the lack of joy itself. A common interpretation is that failure to experience joy in worship of of the Divine is more than a mere detail; it is reflective of fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the religious mission itself and the privilege it confers upon its adherents. Rabbenu Bachya states as much clearly in his commentary; punishment for the absence of joy is inexplicable, unless we understand it to be its own distinct commandment, and not simply an enhancement of each commandment.

It can, though, be both at once: an independent imperative, and one that attaches to each commandment and amplifies it in ways both quantitative and qualitative. R. Yitzchak Karo stressed that an action performed dispassionately is only that; while one performed with joy is absorbed by the personality, and becomes an aspect of one’s spiritual composition. This is particularly expressed in the context of Torah study: the Sochatchover Rebbe, in his oft-cited introduction to his Eglei Tal, considered joy an inseparable component of that directive, and R. Chaim of Volozhin emphasized how much more will be accomplished by a joyous student than by a sad one. Here, again, Rabbenu Bachya comments (Gen. 1:21), seeing joy as fundamental to intellectual prowess, a sentiment conveyed also by Rashi (Shabbat 30b), in explaining why Rabbah would begin his lectures with a joke, and by the Tiferet Yisrael.

The Arizal (cited by the Chayei Adam, Klal 68) understood me-rov kol as stressing that the joy of religious fulfillment must be understood to exceed all other pursuits; similarly, R. Moshe Feinstein (Darash Moshe, drush 12) saw the verse as condemning the faithlessness betrayed by one who calculates that life would be happier if they would be freed from the constraints of religious observance.

Rav Kook (Mussar Avicha 1:8) discerned psychological realities here. Tuv levav is the intellectual decision to act correctly; while Simchah is the emotion that emerges from the recognition that the privilege that accompanies the opportunity is profound and unique, rather than mundane. It is the habituation to even the greatest of life's blessings, which psychologists have termed “the hedonic treadmill”, that nullifies the ability to experience joy and is incompatible with their recognition of the reality of the religious mission. It is thus, he notes, that an earlier verse (26:6) includes the phrase “with all of your heart”, and Rashi's commentary, “every day, it should be as new in your eyes.”

To some, the verse is teaching that the lack of joy is directly connected to sinful behavior; one turns to iniquity out of a feeling of emptiness (see R. Yehoshua Cohen, Yeshuot Kohen). Simchah, in this vein, would convey a sense of meaning, purpose, and accomplishment. In his book The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt correlates true happiness with work that aligns with one’s beliefs regarding what’s good and what is worth doing, a notion which echoes this understanding.

Most fundamentally, Maimonides (Hilkhot Shvitat Yom Tov 6:20 and Lulav 8:15) identifies within this verse specifically an axiomatic principle of Judaism, both that joy is itself religious service, and that anything that distracts from the purity of that service – frivolity, intoxication, or the like -  cannot be associated with religious joy, such as that which is mandated on the festival.

The question of joy specific to festivals brings attention to the impending Days of Judgment, Rosh HaShanahand Yom Kippur, especially at this time of great crisis and uncertainty for the Jewish people. The question of whether these days have the same mandate of joy as that of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot was analyzed by great scholars (including Sha’agat Aryeh, 102; Resp. Binyan Shlomo, II, 48;  Resp. Hitor’rut Teshuvah, III, 365; Resp. Machzeh Avraham, II, 225; Ohr Sameach, Yom Tov 6:17; Resp. Riv’vot Ephraim, V, 382; and others). On the one hand, all these occasions have much in common. On the other, there is also that which separates them, perhaps most saliently that on the Days of Judgment, the fate of the Jews hangs in the balance, and celebration seems inappropriate, if not impossible. This is consistent with the phrasing of the Talmud in explaining why the Hallel prayer is not recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: “the King of Kings is sitting on his throne, and the Book of Life and the Book of Death is open in front of Him, and they will be expected to sing?” (Arakhin 10b). This sentiment is especially relatable at the current moment.

In addressing this question, one approach is particularly resonant. The Code of Jewish Law seems to take both sides of the question, ruling that the jubilant phrase ‘sason v’simchah’ from the festival kiddush should be omitted on Rosh HaShanah (Orach Chaim  582:5), but also deciding, despite conflicting opinions, that we “eat, drink, and rejoice” on that day (O. C. 597:1).

One scholar (see R. Shamai Kehat Gross, Resp. Shevet HaKehati, II, 194) suggested a resolution, invoking the definitions of the Gaon of Vilna that distinguished between the terms ‘Sason’ and ‘Simchah’. The first term is a reference to an active celebration in the moment, an emotion that while appropriate on Sukkot may not fit the Days of Awe. The latter term, by contrast, is more subdued; it also conveys happiness and joy, but more in the sense of a long-term contentment or tranquility, the confidence in ultimate goodness and justice, a belief in God's righteousness and His benevolence towards those who follow in His ways. Rosh HaShanah, and even Yom Kippur, can certainly accommodate this emotion, this year once again.

The medieval ethicist Rabbenu Yonah (Sha’arei Teshuvah, VI:1) identified joy as one of the methods of repentance: “to display joy in achieving atonement”. As R. Yitzchak Hutner explicated (Pachad Yitzchak, Rosh HaShanah # 10 and Sukkot #9), here again joy is neither separate from the commandment nor a mere detail, but a central component. It is meant to parallel the anxiety that accompanies sin and spiritual alienation; if that has genuinely been rectified, a corresponding joy must be present. In this vein he explains how it is that Sukkot, fresh on the heels of the High Holy Days and their redemptive power, is characterized as the happiest of all festivals. 

In the history of America, happiness appears in its earliest moments, when “the Pursuit of Happiness” was invoked in the Declaration of Independence. One might be inclined to draw a contrast between this usage and that of our parashah, seeing the American pursuit as that of leisure, enjoyment, or pleasure rather than the elevated spirituality we have described. In fact, the Meshekh Chokhmah understands our verse to condemn those who fail to experience spiritual joy “me-rov kol”, due to the distraction of material bounty.

However, as Jeffrey Rosen displays in his book of that title, the phrase “pursuit of happiness” predates its appearance in the Declaration of Independence, and has a different meaning.  As Rosen explains, happiness was defined by writers who influenced Thomas Jefferson as “being good, rather than feelinggood...  the founders viewed the pursuit of happiness as a lifelong quest for character improvement, … so that we can be our best selves and serve others.” Towards the end of his book, he notes that in 1926, the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis, was inspired by Thomas Jefferson to write about the founders that “they believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty.”, that (in Rosen's words) “the pursuit of happiness was a quest for self-improvement and moral perfection”.

For America as well, happiness can have multiple meanings and interpretations, all of which can impact life’s meaning in fundamental ways. It can refer to a sense of purpose; it can identify the contentment that accompanies the recognition of that purpose; it can point to a mentality that sees past that which interferes with this purpose.

There are many meanings to the word Simchah, and to the concept of happiness, and as many impediments to realizing them. Nonetheless, our Parshah is a reminder of the terrible costs of allowing these distractions to prevail; instead, our great fortune is that happiness is its own reward.

A previous discussion considered whether the prohibition of basar bechalav is fundamentally about the act of cooking or about the act of eating, whether bishul is itself the transgression or is forbidden because it protects the prohibition of eating. In the first opinion, cooking is the transgression, and eating what results from it is forbidden because it is now, categorically, a to’evah, an abomination (as per Chullin 114b). In the second opinion, eating is the actual concern, and cooking is forbidden only because it produces the specific combination whose eating the Torah wants to prevent, cooking functioning as a protective measure for that inherently negative act rather than as a prohibition in its own right.

Two rabbinic safeguards can be considered in light of this question: the prohibition against bringing meat and dairy together onto the table, and the requirement to separate the eating of meat from the eating of dairy by some interval. Each can be read as an extension of one side of that same question or the other, and positions taken by the commentaries reflect those possibilities.

Bringing Meat and Dairy to the Table

The Mishnah’s treatment of fowl raises a question of its own. Cooking fowl in milk is only rabbinically forbidden, not a matter of Scriptural law, since the Torah’s language is limited to what a mother’s milk can literally nurse. Despite that, the Mishnah records a dispute about whether fowl and dairy may sit together on the table, and it is Beit Hillel, ordinarily the more lenient of the two, who forbids it, while Beit Shammai permits it. Rashi’s comment on the Mishnah supplies the underlying concern: one might come to eat the two together, since their touching already causes some absorption between them.

This language can be read two ways. Rav Soloveitchik, analyzing this comment of Rashi in a shiur on the topic (published in Shiurei HaRav on shechitah, melichah, and mixtures, siman 59), reads it as concern for an active creation of basar bechalav inside the mouth: the ordinary mechanics of eating already blend the two foods together, so that eating fowl and cheese together already produces the same kind of intermingling that cooking them together would. A second reading is possible, though: the concern could be that the physical touching on the table already produces some absorption, not enough to constitute a Toraitic mixture, but enough that a person accustoms himself to treating the boundary between the two as porous, and from there might come to accept an actually cooked mixture as unremarkable. The first reading focuses on the activity; the second focuses on the mindset. Nothing in Rashi’s own words makes either reading decisive.

The question matters because applying the table prohibition to fowl is already legislating on top of a rabbinic prohibition (fowl and dairy generally), and adding a further rabbinic layer on top of that is something halakha generally resists, a fence built around another fence. A second enactment can avoid that objection if one of two things is true: either the entire structure can be described as a single concern rather than two separate ones, or the first layer cannot stand on its own without the second. If bishul is what is truly feared, then forbidding proximity on the table is several steps removed from the target: it might lead to eating fowl and dairy together, which might lead to eating cooked meat and dairy together, which is the actual prohibition. If consumption is what is feared, the chain collapses to one link: proximity leads directly to eating together, and eating fowl with dairy is already dangerously close, experientially, to eating meat with dairy.

Maimonides accepts the table prohibition for fowl even while ruling that cooking fowl in milk is permitted under Scriptural law (Hilkhot Ma’akhalot Assurot 9:4), and his stated reason is hergel aveira, habituation to transgression. That language targets eating, not cooking; there is no cooking concern lurking in a transgression once cooking itself is deemed permitted. Radbaz, commenting on that halakha, adds that this is specifically an area where people are prone to a particular mistake, assuming that because the language of the Torah refers to a kid in its mother’s milk, the prohibition does not reach the beef and dairy combinations they actually encounter. A prohibition drawn too narrowly around the literal case invites that confusion. A prohibition this broad, reaching even to fowl at the table, only makes sense as protection against that mistake about eating: someone who wrongly assumes the Torah’s language covers only a literal kid cooked in its own mother’s milk might conclude that other meat-and-dairy combinations are safe to eat as well. That same mistake has no equivalent on the cooking side. Cooking fowl in milk was never at risk of being confused with cooking an actual kid in its mother’s milk, so a prohibition built to guard against confusion about cooking would have no reason to reach nearly so far.

What Counts as a Separate Meal

The second institution, waiting between meals, opens with Mar Ukva’s statement (Chullin 105a): his father would not eat dairy on the same day he had eaten meat, while Mar Ukva himself, admitting to a lower level, would not eat them in the same meal but would eat dairy at a different one. That leaves “a different meal” needing definition, and three distinct definitions are on offer among the commentators.

Maimonides treats it as a measured interval, roughly six hours, tied to the physical reality that meat continues to lodge between the teeth for some period after eating (Hilkhot Ma’akhalot Assurot 9:28). Rashi, in his commentary to Chullin, gives a related but distinct account: the fat released by meat sticks in the mouth and extends its taste there for a period of time. Both accounts are tied to some physical residue of meat, but they are not identical, and the Tur identifies a difference through two test cases. If a person chews meat for a baby who cannot yet chew, intending to give the baby the softened food without swallowing any himself, Maimonides would still require waiting, since the meat can still lodge in the teeth from chewing, while Rashi would not, since no flavor was actually ingested. If the waiting period has already passed but meat is still, in fact, found stuck between the teeth, Maimonides considers that residue to have already lost its halakhic status as meat, while Rashi’s concern about lingering taste could, in principle, persist regardless of the clock. Accepted practice has adopted the stringent reading on both counts (Tur and Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 89; Darkhei Teshuva 89 discusses the extent of this stringency further).

Tosafot understands the matter differently, as a question of formally concluding one meal and beginning another, accomplished by reciting Birkat HaMazon and clearing the table, with no fixed time requirement at all (Tosafot, Chullin 104b-105a). Within that view, Rabbeinu Tam is cited as holding that rinsing and cleaning the mouth can substitute for the formal change of meal, allowing dairy within the same sitting once that has been done. That substitution has a limit, though: it applies only where rinsing after meat is already the local custom, and where no such custom exists, as after eating fowl, nothing short of the formal conclusion of the meal will suffice.

There is a significant conceptual difference between these two approaches. Maimonides and Rashi are describing something that happens to meat, a persistence of substance or of taste that eventually dissipates on its own schedule. Tosafot is describing something that happens to a person, the establishment of a clear boundary in his own perception between one eating occasion and the next. Under Maimonides, waiting six hours works because that is roughly how long it takes for the meat to stop being, in a meaningful halakhic sense, present. Under Tosafot, the six hours many are still stringent to observe are not doing any work on the meat; they are doing work on the person, entrenching the perception that a real boundary has been crossed.

Mar Ukva’s father did not follow either position as commonly practiced today, which puts him in an interesting spot: no account of physical residue can explain why traces of meat would meaningfully persist for a full day, so the honor Mar Ukva pays him, calling himself the lesser vintage next to his father’s wine, cannot be honoring a stricter reckoning of the same physical fact his son was concerned about on a smaller scale. It seems rather to be a personal stringency built entirely on the perceptual side of the concern, a wish to keep meat and milk mentally separated by more than a single meal’s worth of distance. That would fit naturally with an eating-centered reading of the whole institution: not a concern about combination as a metaphysical event, but a concern about not eating meat in the kind of proximity to milk that erodes the felt distinction between them.

Why Meat Before Milk Is Treated More Strictly

One feature of this entire area resists easy explanation under any of the theories on offer: the halakha is markedly more concerned about dairy following meat than about meat following dairy. If the concern were purely conceptual, a mental boundary that a person is meant to maintain, there is no obvious reason it should run in only one direction. Maimonides and Rashi supply a ready answer, since their accounts, meat lodged in the teeth or its taste lingering on the palate, are facts about meat specifically and have no dairy analogue. That answer, however, belongs to the physical-residue camp; it is harder to generate from within the perceptual, Tosafot-oriented camp on its own terms.

A parallel version of the same asymmetry question surfaces already in the teaching, attributed to Agra, that fowl and cheese may be eaten together without the ordinary precautions of hand-washing or rinsing the mouth. Maimonides reads that leniency as running in one direction only: fowl eaten after cheese needs no interval, but cheese eaten after fowl is treated like cheese after real meat, requiring the same wait. Ramban and Tosafot read the same teaching as symmetric, permitting either order with nothing more than rinsing the mouth. The disagreement tracks the same fault line as the larger asymmetry: a physical-residue account has a ready reason to treat the two directions differently, since only meat leaves something behind to rinse away, while a purely perceptual account has less obvious grounds for building in one direction at all.

A close look at the Rama’s own language on this point (Yoreh De’ah 89) suggests he may not have felt the asymmetry as sharply as later practice assumed. He is generally read as innovating a distinct rule for hard cheese, requiring a wait after it comparable to the wait after meat, a position the Mordechai attributes to the Or Zarua’s account of a mishap that befell the Maharam and led him to be stringent on this point. The Shakh objects strenuously that this is an unwarranted innovation, not required by the letter of the Talmud. Reading the paragraph as a whole, though, the Rama’s broader comments are not confined to hard cheese; he discusses dairy in general in terms that leave open a symmetric range of stringency in both directions, meat after dairy included, with the same latitude between one hour and six that he allows for dairy after meat. If that reading is correct, the sharp asymmetry that eventually took hold as normative practice may be less a conceptual necessity of the Tosafot-Rama position than a historical reflection of which custom happened to gain traction, hard cheese acquiring the reputation of a meat-like food because of its texture and consistency, and thereby collecting stringencies that soft dairy never did.

Where the Three-Hour Custom Comes From

The one-hour Dutch practice and the six-hour practice that has become most widespread both have relatively clear pedigrees, the latter following Maimonides and the Shulchan Aruch directly, the former tied by the Rama to a source in the Zohar. The three-hour practice, associated with parts of Germany and England, is harder to source, though not entirely without earlier attestation; Rabbeinu Yerucham quotes it in Rashi’s name, and the Chayei Adam references waiting some hours, without further specification.

Several theories have been offered to account for it. The simplest is geographic: in cultures with a customary tea break between lunch and dinner, particularly one that might include milk, a natural three-hour rhythm between the meat meal and the dairy occasion would develop on its own. A more elaborate theory, developed by Rabbi Yosef Grossman in the Mesorah Journal (published by the OU), works from the assumption that both daily meals needed to occur in daylight, since eating in the dark was considered deficient. The Talmud (Yoma 74b) records that one who cannot see what he eats is never fully satisfied by the food, even food as remarkable as the manna, whose taste could match anything a person wished for; a midrash connects that teaching to the later requirement of lighting candles for Shabbat, on the theory that even the finest food falls short of full enjoyment if it cannot be seen. A meal eaten at midday leaves a full twelve-hour day to reach a dinner at nightfall in summer, roughly six hours, but only about three hours in winter. If three hours works in winter, it is not obvious that it should shrink further in summer, and the practice may simply have generalized to the shorter figure year-round. Rabbi David Brofsky, in a shiur for Yeshivat Har Etzion’s Virtual Beit Midrash, has suggested a third account: three hours is exactly half of six, and its significance may lie not in reaching the next meal but in leaving the range of the first one, exiting that meal being the more meaningful threshold than fully entering the one that follows.

All three theories share a notable common feature: none of them requires positing anything about the physical behavior of meat. They are theories about calendars, daylight, and the felt boundaries of a day’s schedule, which fits comfortably with a Tosafot-style, perception-oriented account of what waiting accomplishes, considerably less naturally with a Maimonides-style account of residue dissipating on its own physical timetable. A further suggestion, made in the Pri Chadash, held that the hours in question lengthen in summer and shorten in winter, keyed to the daylight rather than the clock; this too was never accepted as practice, nor was the idea that sleeping in the interval should count as an interruption regardless of elapsed time (a notion the Chatam Sofer is reported to have tested for himself, preparing a cup of milk to drink upon waking after a meat meal and a nap, only to have it spill on repeated occasions, which he took as a sign that the theory was not meant to be relied upon). Both ideas, even though neither was incorporated into practical halakha, illustrate the same kind of thinking as the accepted three-hour theories: they treat the wait as reflecting a perception of the day’s structure, not a physical fact of digestion.

A Case of Uncertainty

A practical question arises from the reality of daily life, apart from any of the theories discussed above: what should a person do who is not certain whether enough time has elapsed, having simply lost track. The straightforward instinct is that uncertainties about rabbinic law are resolved leniently. The Talmud, however, recognizes a category called davar sheyeish lo matirin, an item forbidden only temporarily that will become permitted on its own once enough time passes; such an item is treated more stringently than one permanently forbidden, not less, for purposes of nullification. Rashi (Beitzah 3b) and the Ran (Nedarim 52a) both address why this category resists nullification, and they offer two distinct explanations. Rashi’s reasoning is practical: since full, unqualified permission is coming regardless, there is no reason to rely on nullification of a lingering prohibition in the meantime, and one should simply wait. The Ran locates the rule instead in the mechanics of nullification itself: nullification works through a clash between two distinct identities, a forbidden item and a permitted one, and an item that is only temporarily forbidden is not different enough from what it will shortly become to produce that clash.

The two explanations point in different directions once the question shifts from nullification to the separate question of whether the ordinary rule of resolving rabbinic uncertainty leniently should apply here. Rashi’s reasoning transfers easily: if certainty is available simply by waiting, there is no reason to settle for a permissive ruling issued under uncertainty. The Ran’s reasoning does not transfer as naturally, since it is a claim about how mixtures behave rather than about why a person should prefer to wait. The Sefer Yad Yehuda applies Rashi’s logic directly to the meat-and-milk case, counseling against leniency here, since the entire uncertainty is of the sort that time alone will dissolve.

Against this, the Tzelach (cited in the Darkhei Teshuva) limits the logic to a discrete, specific object about which the only relevant question is timing: have it now or have it later. Milk products are available at any hour, so nothing is gained by waiting; the choice is not between eating this now or eating it later, but between eating dairy now or eating dairy both now and later, and the patience that makes sense for a single scarce item does not obviously transfer to that choice.

One further complication must be raised. Rashi’s category, in its classical formulation, concerns objects awaiting permission. The uncertainty in the ordinary case of forgetting how much time has passed is not about any object; it is about the person’s own status, whether he is still, in the vernacular, “fleishig.” That is a different kind of uncertainty, and it is not obvious that a doctrine built around objects transfers cleanly to a status a person carries. The example given in the Megillat Sefer fits the doctrine more comfortably: a person who knows with certainty that he is fleishig but has a specific item on the table whose contact with dairy is uncertain is dealing with uncertainty about that one object, which will become unambiguously permitted once his fleishig status lapses. There, withholding leniency rests on firmer ground than it does for a person unsure of his own status.

The Two Institutions Together

The question posed at the outset, cooking as the target versus eating as the target, does not resolve cleanly in this context. What emerges instead is that the table prohibition reads more naturally as protecting against habituated eating, while the waiting requirement splits along commentator lines between a physical-residue account (Maimonides, Rashi) and a perception-based account (Tosafot, the Rama in practice, if not entirely in theory). That split belongs to a broader halakhic pattern: some rabbinic extensions are calibrated to a genuine risk that one act will lead to another, while others mark a categorical proximity between two acts that halakha refuses to tolerate even where no realistic path from one to the other exists. Maimonides’ own language of hergel aveira occupies a third position between these two, describing neither a single causal step nor a static resemblance, but the slower formation of habit: prevented not case by case, but by keeping the adjacent practice at enough of a distance that the habituation never has the chance to form.

Mar Ukva’s father fits this picture better than any account tied to physical residue does. Nothing about a full day’s separation can be justified by how long fat lingers in the mouth or meat lodges between the teeth. What it can be justified by is a wish to keep the categories of meat and milk further apart in daily experience than the letter of the law strictly requires, a stringency built not on doing more of what the law already does, but on amplifying the reasoning the law is already built on. Read this way, the discussion is doing more than tolerating a personal stringency alongside the letter of the law; it is supplying the parameters for which stringencies are meaningful. Mar Ukva’s own admiration for a practice stricter than his own carries the real lesson: a life lived faithfully within halakha still leaves room to notice where the law is already pointing, and to walk a little further in that direction, each individual in accordance with the pull of his spirit.

Despite that statement, the accepted halakhah is that the product of prohibited labor on Shabbat, such as food that has been cooked, is forbidden, as a matter of Rabbinic Law. The Shulchan Aruch codifies that one who cooks deliberately may never eat what he cooked, that others may eat it once Shabbat has ended, and that one who cooked inadvertently must himself wait until Shabbat has ended (Orach Chaim 318:1). That prohibition stands opposite a permission the Torah conveyed about this very case.

The issue was raised earlier in Massechet Chullin regarding one who slaughters an animal on Shabbat or on Yom Kippur. The mishnah teaches that the slaughter is valid, notwithstanding that the slaughterer has incurred capital liability (Chullin 14a); whatever his own standing, the act worked, and the animal is not a nevelah (carrion). This leads to a discussion regarding the status of food cooked on Shabbat.

Three positions are stated in a beraita (15a), all of which distinguish between an intentional violation of Shabbat (meizid) and an inadvertent one (shogeg). R. Meir permits the food where the cooking was inadvertent and forbids it where the cooking was intentional. R. Yehuda permits the inadvertent cook only once Shabbat has ended, and forbids the intentional cook permanently. R. Yochanan HaSandlar, where the cooking was inadvertent, permits the food to others once Shabbat has ended while forbidding it to the cook himself, and where the cooking was intentional forbids it permanently to everyone.

Rav applied these positions selectively, teaching R. Meir's lenient view to his own students while ruling publicly in accordance with R. Yehuda, on account of listeners who could not be relied upon with the leniency. He also limited R. Meir's leniency to cooking, where the food could have been eaten before Shabbat and the labor only improved it, and did not extend it to slaughtering, which renders edible an animal that was not edible beforehand.

In a different passage (Ketubot 34a), a discussion of the subject centers on the verse cited above. R. Chiyya derived R. Yochanan HaSandlar's position from it: just as kodesh, food consecrated to the Temple, may not be eaten, so the products of Shabbat may not be eaten. The word "lakhem", to you, limits the comparison, so that unlike consecrated food these products are forbidden only in eating and not in deriving benefit, and the adjacent phrase "mechalleha mot yumat", one who profanes it shall be put to death, confines the prohibition to the intentional offender. Rav Acha and Ravina then divide over whether the prohibition of ma'aseh Shabbat is a matter of Torah law, on the strength of that derivation, or of rabbinic law alone; the latter reads the same phrase in the opposite direction, taking "ki kodesh hi" to teach that the day is holy while its products are not. The codification of the halakhah reflects the position that the prohibition of this food is rabbinic.

Rashi explains that the question in Chullin is raised in accordance with R. Yehuda (Rashi, Chullin 114b, s.v. ela me'atah). For R. Yehuda, the intentional offender may never eat what he cooked, but that prohibition is a penalty imposed upon him, and everyone else may eat the food once Shabbat has ended. It is the permission extended to everyone else that provokes the question, since the general principle should forbid this food to all of them. The verse establishes that the products of Shabbat carry no prohibition of to'evah at all.

The scope Rashi assigns to that general principle is broad (Rashi, Chullin 114b, s.v. harei hu bebal tochal). Whatever God has instructed a person to treat as abhorrent and to keep his distance from falls under the prohibition against eating, permanently and in every circumstance, whether the item came about through a transgression or not, as where a minor or a non-Jew produced it. The prohibition is indifferent to the producer's culpability, and indifferent to whether any violation occurred at all.

Tosafot press the point from both directions (Tosafot, Ketubot 34a). On the position that ma'aseh Shabbat is forbidden by Torah law, they ask why the derivation from kodesh is needed at all, since the general principle would forbid the food on its own; they answer that the general principle would have forbidden the inadvertent case together with the intentional one, so the derivation is needed in order to confine the prohibition to the intentional offender. On the position that ma'aseh Shabbat is not forbidden by Torah law, they ask why any exclusion is needed, and answer that without it the food would have been forbidden under the general principle. On the accepted position, then, the function of the verse is precisely to negate that principle. Tosafot raise the same question in Chullin and leave it unanswered (Chullin 116a), perhaps holding that the general principle is itself confined to the intentional case.

Maimonides frames the halakhah accordingly (Hilchot Shabbat 6:23). One who performed labor on Shabbat deliberately may never benefit from that labor, while other Jews may benefit from it as soon as Shabbat has ended, since the verse teaches that the day is holy and its products are not; one who acted inadvertently, along with everyone else, may benefit immediately at the close of Shabbat. His ruling follows R. Yehuda, while the reason he attaches to it is the derivation that appears in Ketubot only within the discussion of R. Yochanan HaSandlar, and not in connection with R. Yehuda's position at all.

R. Yaakov Farbstein assembles these sources and resolves that difficulty by reading the derivation as Rashi and Tosafot read it (Ohalei Yaakov, Chullin, siman 1). Maimonides is not explaining why the offender himself is forbidden, which is a penalty, but why everyone else is permitted. Absent the verse, the food would have been forbidden to all of them permanently under the general principle, and the verse is what releases them.

There is a sweeping principle articulated by the Taz, which is so influential that R. David Kohn devoted a volume to it and described it in that volume's title as famous: what the Torah has permitted lies beyond the authority of the Sages to forbid, and this holds not only where the permission is stated outright but also where it is arrived at through the exposition of a verse (Taz, Orach Chaim 588:5; Yoreh De'ah 117:1; Choshen Mishpat 2). The permission of ma'aseh Shabbat is arrived at by just such an exposition, and by one whose entire function is to permit, a prohibition having been proposed and a verse brought to defeat it. The rabbinic prohibition should not have been available.

The difficulty exists independently of the Taz's position, which was expressed by earlier authorities as well (see, for example, Meiri, Megillah 4a, s.v. v'yesh matirin). Rabbinic legislation extends a concern of the Torah, whether by building a fence around a prohibition of the Torah or by forbidding an act resembling one the Torah forbade. A rabbinic prohibition of this food extends no concern of the Torah about this food, the verse having stated that there is none.

This passage posed another difficulty as well, regarding a principle developed by several rabbinic authors.

A number of later authorities held that what the Torah insists upon on Shabbat is directed at the person rather than at the labor. God did not object to labor being performed on Shabbat, but insisted that the bodies of the Jew, of his servant, and of his animal be at rest (Responsa Chatam Sofer, Orach Chaim 84 and 201; Beit Meir, Even HaEzer 5; Netivot HaMishpat 348:4). This may or may not parallel the familiar terminology of an issur gavra, a prohibition addressed to the person, as opposed to an issur cheftza, a prohibition attaching to an act or to an object.

The principle is originally raised to explain the fact that, while there is a prohibition against instructing a non-Jew to do work on one's behalf on Shabbat, this is a rabbinic stricture; apparently, the Torah itself has no objection. Accordingly, these authorities assert that, in fact, the Torah is not concerned with the causation of melacha on Shabbat. It is only occupied with the state of rest that a Jew must personally maintain. It follows that shelichut, agency, does not function in the laws of Shabbat: however an agent's act is attributed, the one who appointed him remained at rest, and that is the whole of what was demanded of him.

Among those who objected to this principle was R. Yosef Shaul Nathanson, who did so on the strength of this Talmudic passage (Responsa Sho'el U'Meishiv, Telitaah 2:177). Forbidding the products of Shabbat was proposed, and a verse was required in order to reject the proposal. Such a proposal is intelligible only if the labor itself is repugnant in God's eyes. Were the demand of the Torah simply that this person rest, his failure to rest would be a finished fact by the time the food reached the table, and nothing about the food would call for consideration, or for a verse to permit it.

Rejecting the principle leaves unanswered the question it had been used to answer, namely why one is permitted by Torah law to have an act of labor on Shabbat performed through an agent. R. Nathanson answers by invoking the principle that liability on Shabbat requires "melekhet machshevet", roughly translatable as purposeful labor, the labor performed corresponding to the labor intended. Where liability turns on intent, it cannot be transferred to an agent. Another person's act can be attributed to the one who appointed him, but another person's intention cannot be assigned to someone else. (See a related suggestion in R. Shlomo Abrahams, Divrei Shlomo 47.)

However, this position may be only a semantic shift from the one to which he is objecting. If agency fails because liability is bound to the intent of the particular person performing the labor, the prohibition remains tied to the individual. The point of attachment has moved from the resting body to the intention, and it has not moved off the person.

The objection also assumes that the verse functions as an override, that the position obtaining before the verse, under which the product would be forbidden, reflects the real character of the matter, and that the Torah is granting an exception against the grain of its own logic. On that assumption the earlier position stands as evidence of what labor on Shabbat is, and the inference holds.

A verse can equally function as a correction. The instinct that labor performed in violation of Shabbat leaves a tainted product behind is a natural extension from the other prohibitions of the Torah, which characteristically do leave a forbidden object behind, and the Torah is correcting that extension in stating that the products of the day were never the subject of the prohibition. Read that way, the verse supports the position R. Nathanson is arguing against.

R. Yehoshua Ehrenberg accounts for the rabbinic prohibition by distinguishing on a fundamental level between what the Torah prohibited and what the Sages added (Responsa Dvar Yehoshua 3:28). Where a prohibition is addressed to a person, his violation of it does not impact the product; he has acted wrongly, and the result of his action is untainted. By Torah law the prohibition of labor on Shabbat is addressed to the person, so the food he cooked is fully cooked food and the animal he slaughtered is fully slaughtered, which is why the mishnah rules the slaughter valid and why the Torah could state that the products of the day are not holy.

What the Sages added, in this account, was not a prohibition upon the food, which would have been impossible due to the Taz's rule. Rather, they added a new element to the experience of Shabbat, one that attaches to the act itself rather than to the person. Once the labor is prohibited as an act, the status of the food follows without any further enactment, since an act that is itself prohibited is treated as not having taken effect.

Through his position, he addresses two other potential challenges to the original principle. The first arises from a case of one who is traveling as Shabbat begins with his purse in his hand and gives it to a non-Jew to carry, where Rashi describes the non-Jew as the Jew's agent (Rashi, Shabbat 153a). That description is difficult if agency has no application to the laws of Shabbat. In R. Ehrenberg's account, agency has no application on the level of Torah law, where the prohibition is addressed to the person, and does have an application on the rabbinic level, where the prohibition attaches to the act.

The second arises from havdalah, the ceremony concluding Shabbat. One does not recite the blessing over fire upon a flame that a non-Jew kindled on Shabbat, because that flame did not rest from prohibited labor (Berakhot 53a; Maimonides, Hilchot Shabbat 29:26; Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 298:5). No Jew did anything here, and a non-Jew is not commanded to rest, so if the concern of the Torah is the rest of the Jew, the reason given is difficult to understand, as there was no prohibited labor involved in creating the flame. If, on the rabbinic level, the labor is prohibited as an act, the flame can be described as one through which a prohibited act was performed.

Even granting this explanation, the legislation itself calls for scrutiny. The Sages did not contradict the verse, since they legislated about the labor while the verse spoke about its products, but they did legislate in a direction the Torah had actively declined to take.

Rabbinic enactments on Shabbat divide into two categories (Maimonides, Hilchot Shabbat 21:1). Some acts are forbidden because they resemble the categories of labor that the Torah prohibits, an authority the Maggid Mishneh and Nachmanides locate in the command "tishbetu", that one rest, which the Torah added after specifying those categories (Maggid Mishneh, Hilchot Shabbat 21:1; Nachmanides, Lev. 23:24). Others are forbidden as protective decrees, lest a person come through them to a violation of the Torah.

The first category is the work of identifying an intent of the Torah that the Torah did not itself legislate, and giving it legislative form. The prohibition of the products of Shabbat is difficult to explain in this way, as a verse was expounded for the express purpose of ruling the prohibition out.

By contrast, a protective decree may be more readily explained. If what the Torah demands is that the person rest, the question becomes what it takes for a person to hold to such a demand. A demand addressed to an individual requires a setting that supports it. The penalty upon the food shapes the environment in which the person is asked to rest. With their legislation, the rabbis set a tone for all future individuals striving to properly observe Shabbat.

The Torah commanded us to honor the Shabbat by remaining at rest, as God did after creating the world. The Rabbis reminded us that, as with everything, the environment we cultivate around us is vital to how we comport ourselves. It is now our responsibility to maintain that effort so that we can truly meet the moment as it was meant to be experienced.

The definitions offered tend to fall into two broad categories. One approach, rooted in the early talmudic commentaries and adopted by the Chafetz Chaim, understands the prohibition to be directed against believing the report to be true, while allowing, on the basis of the Talmud's statement that with regard to lashon hara one is required to be concerned for the possibility that the item is true but not to accept it (Nidah 61a), that protective measures may be taken in the absence of such belief. Others question whether belief is a voluntary act at all, and thus whether it can be the subject of a command; the Chazon Ish considered the Chafetz Chaim's position on this matter practically unfeasible, and relevant only on an academic plane. On that understanding, the prohibition is directed not at internal perceptions but at conduct, and the listener's obligation is to ensure that his behavior toward the subject not change as a consequence of what he has heard. A further element, closely related to the first approach and relevant to the discussion below, is the enjoyment that the listener takes in the information.

What does seem to be agreed upon is that "accepting," in any of these definitions, is more than simply hearing the information itself. Thus, the question presents itself: is there anything wrong with listening to lashon hara, if one is able to prevent the transmission into "acceptance"?

It would seem, at a minimum, highly advisable to avoid listening, as there is a very short jump from listening to "accepting," whatever the definition of that term might be. One who chooses to listen may be setting up quite a difficult challenge, particularly in light of the effect of cognitive biases in impacting perception in ways that are hard to correct for, if we are even aware of them in the first place. The question remains, though, whether this is a matter of prudence alone, or whether the act of listening itself is subject to prohibition. (For an ethical discourse on the spiritual impact of even passive acts of listening, see R. Natan Tzvi Finkel, Ohr HaTzafun, "Koach HaShmiah," pp. 23-27.)

In this week's Torah reading, there is a source that suggests it is. Among the laws regulating the sanctity of the Israelite camp, the Torah instructs that "you shall have a peg along with your gear" (Deut. 23:14), to be used in covering waste so that the camp remains holy. The Talmud (Ketubot 5a), in a derashah of Bar Kappara, reads the word "azenecha" ("your gear") as "oznecha" ("your ear"): should a person hear something unworthy, he should place his finger in his ear. The passage continues on 5b by asking why a person's fingers are tapered like pegs, concluding that they are shaped so as to be available for that purpose, and R. Yishmael's school adds that the ear itself is rigid while the earlobe is soft, so that the lobe may be folded inward to seal the ear. The Rabbis conclude there that one should not allow his ears to hear idle talk, as the ears are the first of the limbs to be scorched.

The status of this instruction is itself a matter of discussion (see Chiddushei Chatam Sofer to Ketubot; Maharal, Netivot Olam, Netiv HaTzniut, ch. 2; R. Yosef Engel, Gilyonei HaShas, Shabbat 108b; and R. David Mandelbaum, Pardes Yosef HaChadash to Deut.). The Chafetz Chaim (Hil. Lashon Hara 6, BMC 2) understands the passage to reflect a rabbinic prohibition, enacted to prevent the inadvertent violation of the Torah prohibition of accepting; similarly, see R. Yitzchak Abuhav, Menorat HaMaor, Ner 2, 53, and Orach Meisharim 8:28, as well as Mishpetei HaShalom, p. 221, n. 27. The Sefer Charedim, by contrast, lists the matter under the heading of positive Torah commandments dependent upon the ear (3:3; see Alei Be'er, pp. 155-156).

The Derivation From the Judge

The Chafetz Chaim does not rest with a rabbinic prohibition. He maintains that the Torah prohibition itself includes listening, a point he derives from attention to the source verse, which bans the bearing of a false or unnecessary report (Hil. Lashon Hara6:2). As noted in the earlier discussion, the Talmud associates another prohibition with this verse: a rabbinic court judge may not listen to one litigant outside the presence of the other. In that case, the prohibition must refer not only to "accepting," but even to just listening. Since both prohibitions are covered by the same words in the same verse, it would then follow that accepting lashon hara is also defined as including the simple act of listening.

As many note, and as the Chafetz Chaim himself acknowledges, it is possible to question this derivation (see Mo'adim U'Zmanim, VII, 204; Chelkat Binyamin, Biurim, 7:6, and Shevilei Chaim there; R. Hillel Zaks in the journal Marpei Lashon, I, pp. 9-11; the questions raised in Netivot Chaim, netiv 4, and Shevilei Chaim, 4 (aleph); and at length in Zera Chaim, as well as Kodesh Yisrael, #10). The verse might be interpreted in a general way as not allowing truth to be compromised in one's capacity as a recipient of information. For a judge, who has the responsibility of complete neutrality, mere ex parte listening will skew his perspective and may lead to a false verdict. A private citizen may not incur the same risks just by listening, and might therefore be barred only from "accepting." (Regarding limitations on the prohibition as it applies to the judge, which affect the comparison, see Resp. Maharil, 195, and Shemirat HaPeh KeHilkhato, pp. 135-136.)

It should be noted in this context that Maimonides does refer to a prohibition of listening in his discussion of ba'alei lashon hara, writing that it is prohibited to live in their neighborhood, and all the more so to live among them and to listen to their words (Hil. Deot 7:6). Emek HaLashon, 47, considers whether this is a prohibition specific to the ba'al lashon hara, or, alternatively, if it is a general prohibition, what reason there is to mention it specifically in that context.

The verse itself has been read in opposite directions on this question. R. Yisrael Moshe Fishelder (Mivtzar Yisrael, p. 275) interprets it to actively exclude a prohibition on listening; since the emphasis is on accepting a report that is "shav," it may follow that one must first listen in order to ascertain that the report is indeed in that category, and then disregard the report if it is. R. Zalman Sorotzkin, in his Oznayim LaTorah, suggests the reverse. Commenting on the verse in Exodus, he notes that the word "shav" can mean falsehood, but in contrast to the word "sheker," connotes a blatant, obvious falsity. Accordingly, the listener may feel that since he knows the statement is false, there is no danger in listening. This is the attitude the Torah is warning against: one is not to take in a slanderous report even when aware of its falsity, as the act of listening will encourage the speaker and generate more conversation of a harmful nature.

Guidelines for the Unavoidable

Working off of his premise, the Chafetz Chaimassumes a general prohibition, at least on some level, of listening to gossip, and thus advises avoiding situations in which such conversation is likely to occur (Hil. Lashon Hara 9:4, and see his note there regarding sitting in synagogue near those with a proclivity to gossip; see also Birkat Yitzchak, p. 276. As to the possibility of an independent prohibition to live among gossipers, see Alei Be'er, p. 236, and Sha'arei Avraham, pp. 334-339; regarding continued employment at a workplace where lashon hara is rampant, see Hil. Lashon Hara 1:6 and Responsa LeChafetz BaChaim, III, 2).

He also acknowledges, however, that there are circumstances that cannot be predicted in advance. Further, once entrenched in such a context it may be very difficult for a listener either to influence the environment positively or to extricate himself from the situation. Rebuking the speakers for engaging in lashon hara, while apparently indicated by the Torah's mandate to rebuke the wrongdoer (Lev. 19:17; see Shabbat 54b), is a risky endeavor, as the likelihood is great that the speakers will react by committing further to the gossip rather than refraining, and thus requires a careful analysis as to whether silence is preferable (see Yevamot 65b, Hil. Lashon Hara 6:9 and 9:4, and Resp. LeChafetz BaChaim I, 40; if objecting will not be effective but will also not exacerbate the problem, it still may be called for so as not to give the impression of acquiescence, as in Shevilei Chaim, pp. 23-24, and Alei Be'er, pp. 164-167).

Accordingly, he issues guidelines for those who may find themselves in such a context and consider it impractical to leave or to avoid the physical act of listening (Hil. Lashon Hara 6:5). First, these individuals should not say anything or make any gesture that indicates support or agreement with the negative information being spoken; in fact, the body language should indicate disapproval. Second, they should endeavor not to cross over into "acceptance." Third, in a condition perhaps closely connected to the second, they should mentally commit not to derive any enjoyment from that which is being said.

This last condition is based on a technical principle that exists in Jewish law, most often applied, although not exclusively so, in the laws of Shabbat. The rule is that while an individual is not necessarily held responsible for an action performed without intent (davar she'eino mitkavein), he is liable if the result was certain to occur (psik reishei); this liability, however, is only imposed when the result is desirable to the actor (neicha lei), and if it is undesirable, the exemption is maintained. Thus, the Chafetz Chaim is stating that one is not to be held accountable for conversation that he cannot help but overhear, but only as long as he does not "enjoy" what is being related. As this may to some extent be the very definition of accepting lashon hara, the second and third conditions are closely related. (See R. Gedaliah Finkel, Imrei Gedalyah, Ketubot 6b, pp. 106-109, for an extensive analysis of whether the concepts of psik reishei and neicha lei apply to this case; he notes that kabbalat lashon hara is different from other Torah prohibitions, as it does not in any event involve an action, but is wholly defined by the acceptance, and accordingly, without intent, the violation may not exist. See similarly Netiv Chaim, 10; R. Zevulun Shuv, Sha'arei Zevulun, Yoreh Deah 77; R. Uriel Eisenthal, Megilat Sefer, Shabbat, 88; and R. Yechiel Rothstein in the journal Kovetz Shiurei Torah, V, pp. 158-165. See also the explanation of the neicha lei principle as it relates to lashon hara in Responsa LeChafetz BaChaim, I:4, and see also #11, discussing conversation overheard in a restroom.) It is perhaps of interest that the sugya of davar she'eino mitkavein appears in the immediate continuation of the passage in Ketubot 5b that generated the discussion of covering one's ears.

When Listening Is Necessary

Even if it is granted that there is a prohibition of listening to lashon hara and not just of actually accepting it, there are still important distinctions to be drawn between the two. Consequently, there may be circumstances in which, even if the negative information is not to be accepted, it may still be permitted, and sometimes necessary, to listen. Most importantly, this is relevant in the area of a possibility of harm to the listener or to others, the category of necessary or purposeful information. As noted in the earlier discussion, this factor may be relevant even in circumstances where the information itself is not grounded enough to be uncritically accepted. Thus, it emerges that there are certainly contexts in which it would be necessary to listen to what is being alleged, even if it is not currently justified to consider the information as true.

This may be all the more the case when considering certain realities of modern life. The author of a major commentary on the Chafetz Chaim, Rabbi Moshe Kaufman, asserts at length in his work that contemporary society involves an interdependence on others that makes it even more necessary to be aware of possible concerns regarding the character of one's associates. Thus, he advises emphasizing the purposeful element in such listening, rather than avoiding listening altogether, a position he acknowledges is somewhat at variance with that of the Chafetz Chaim (Netiv Chaim, 6:4, with Zera Chaim, p. 365).

Further, there is an even greater obligation of awareness for one who is in a leadership position and has responsibility for the care of others. Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, a towering rabbinic authority who was one of the most prominent leaders of World War II era Lithuania, asserted that anyone who is in a position of communal leadership, entrusted with the care of a community, school, or the like, is obligated to know and to listen to that which is being said that may affect those under his care. To refuse to do so out of concern for receiving lashon hara, he maintains, is a misguided abdication of responsibility. (The statements of R. Grodzinski, and others like it, are cited by R. Moshe Shternbuch, Responsa Teshuvot VeHanhagot, V, 398, who strongly emphasizes that message.) Obtaining this awareness is certainly not lashon hara, as the need to protect students and other dependents is a clear priority. Similarly, the responsibility inherent in the position unequivocally establishes such awareness as "purposeful" and not gossip.

As the Chafetz Chaim himself notes (Hil. Lashon Hara, klal 6:4), there are other times as well that it is appropriate to listen to lashon hara and rechilut. For example, if one is in a position to effectively defend the subject, or to make peace among quarreling parties, there may be a constructive role to play by partaking in such a conversation. As he points out, at times it is counterproductive to engage the speaker, but it may still be beneficial to address the other listeners afterward. If one can be successful in changing the direction of the talk, a case could be made that this is the preferable approach even if it would have been possible to stop the speech from happening in the first place (see Netiv Chaim, ad loc. 7).

Accordingly, maintaining a balance between the prohibition of accepting lashon hara and carrying out one's responsibility toward others may actually mean creating a greater mental space between the act of listening on the one hand, and the act of "accepting," however that term is defined. Alternatively, if the information being related is unlikely to be of any consequence for the listener or for those to whom he could extend protection, and is seemingly of an inconsequential, salacious nature, then avoiding hearing it in the first place is likely the most appropriate policy.

Understood in that way, the two responses are not in conflict with one another; both proceed from the recognition that the listener carries two responsibilities simultaneously. He is obligated to be aware of what he is responsible to address, on his own behalf and on behalf of those whose welfare has been entrusted to him. He is obligated at the same time to see to it that the subject of the report is not mistreated on the strength of information that may well be incomplete, distorted, or false. Neither of these responsibilities can be improvised at the moment it is called for; such conversations tend to arrive without warning, and the listener's reaction will reflect whatever equilibrium he has already established between the two. The question of whether to listen, then, turns out to depend less on the moment in which it is asked than on the preparation that has come before it, learning how to listen.

The introduction is unlike that of most other books of its kind. It contains nothing about the tractate, no description of the commentary's method, no survey of the works that came before it, no statement of what the author hoped to contribute, and no acknowledgment of those who assisted him. The whole of it is given over to a story from the Talmud, and to R. Margoliyot's interpretation of that story, followed by his signature. The story is not even drawn from Sanhedrin, but from a completely unrelated tractate. Nothing in the introduction explains why it appears there, or what bearing it has on the volume that follows, and the reader is left to work that out for himself.

That story (Taanit 21a) is about Ilfa and R. Yochanan, who were studying Torah together, but were pressed by poverty, so much so that they resolved to go out and earn a living, saying that they would thereby fulfill "there shall be no destitute among you" (Deut. 15:4). While they sat and ate beneath an unstable wall, R. Yochanan overheard two ministering angels, one of whom proposed toppling the wall upon them, since they were "abandoning eternal life and occupying themselves with temporal life." The other objected that one of the two was destined for greatness. R. Yochanan asked Ilfa whether he had heard anything, and when Ilfa answered that he had not, R. Yochanan concluded that the reference had been to himself. He turned back, applying to himself instead the verse "the destitute will not cease from within the land" (Deut. 15:11), while Ilfa went on to trade. By the time Ilfa returned, R. Yochanan had been installed at the head of the academy, and Ilfa was told that had he remained and studied, the appointment would have been his. He thereupon suspended himself from a ship's mast and declared that if anyone could bring him a question from a baraita of R. Chiya and R. Oshaya that he could not resolve from the Mishnah, he would release his grip and drown. An elder came forward with one, and Ilfa resolved it.

Many presentations of this passage read it as a message about life decisions, in which R. Yochanan is presented as having chosen correctly. Some explain, for example, that although R. Yochanan is the one identified as having heard the angels, this was not a matter of his having been given an advantage that Ilfa was denied; it was rather that Ilfa was not listening for the message.

R. Margoliyot, however, saw a different lesson. He first gathers together the indications in the story that Ilfa stood as the equal, or even the superior, of R. Yochanan and would have been fully worthy of the position he did not receive. Ilfa is named first; R. Yochanan addresses him with the honorific ‘mar’; Ilfa is told that the appointment would have been his had he remained, which concedes that it was his to lose, and Rashi (s.v. i ativ mar ve-garis) states explicitly that the townspeople would have crowned Ilfa as they crowned R. Yochanan, since Ilfa was the more learned of the two.

R. Margoliyot then adds to this the background not given in this passage. R. Yochanan possessed a patrimony, and in his youth, he sold his property and his ancestral holdings in order to sustain himself through the years of his study, giving up all he had out of his love for the Torah. Ilfa had nothing to sell. He had inherited neither field nor vineyard, and lacking any means of maintaining himself and his household until he reached the years in which he would be fit to issue rulings, he was compelled to turn to commerce and to say that Torah is good together with a worldly occupation. What had looked like a contrast between two attitudes toward Torah turns out to be a contrast between a man who could afford to remain and a man who could not.

There is a familiar contemporary claim, popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and other books, that sustained accumulated practice accounts for extraordinary achievement more reliably than native gifts do. Even if so, the point is not as meritocratic as it may sound, since there are many whose circumstances do not allow them to devote that time, however great their gifts may be. Ilfa's gifts were never in question, nor was his devotion. What he lacked was the reality in which those hours could be invested.

R. Margoliyot writes poignantly about how Ilfa devoted his nights to study, even though his days were committed to labor, in commerce or in “the office.” The anachronistic introduction of an office transports the reader out of the Talmudic era and into the present, hinting at others who are simultaneously being described here.

R. Margoliyot understands the angels' charge as bearing on the character of the Torah that would be learned under such conditions rather than on its abandonment. The angels spoke severely even though they knew that even as merchants neither would slacken in his learning; Torah of that kind, however, remains only “temporal life” for the one who learns it; only complete commitment could become Torah of “eternal life.”

R. Margoliyot's Ilfa has no fixed circle of students and no regular hours in which to teach. He therefore chooses another means by which his Torah will be eternal life rather than temporal life: he writes it down. Whatever he arrives at in the hours he sets aside for study he records in his notebooks, and the notebooks circulate.

In making this point, it is not incidental that R. Margoliyot's erudition is evident: he notes references in Menachot (70a) of what was written in Ilfa's pinkas(notebook), and its counterpart in the Yerushalmi (Maasrot 2:4), where R. Yonah reports having found something written in the pinkas of Chilfai. There are the places in which R. Yochanan learned from Ilfa's words and transmitted teachings in his name, in Zevachim and in the Yerushalmi in Terumot, Challah, and Shabbat. A scholar who led no school nonetheless reached the generation after him, through his writing.

True, Ilfa did not receive the appointment that ultimately went to R. Yochanan. Ilfa, says R. Margoliyot, had no wish whatever to reign; his longings were to learn and to teach, to give others a means of taking hold of the Torah, to draw from the earliest sources and give sustenance to those thirsty for the word of God, in the conversation of colleagues and in the publication of what he had written. A private individual who holds no office and does not presume to rule, he adds, has no need to drill himself in the decisions of the latest of the later authorities, and does not occupy himself with abridgments of the halakha; his free hours go instead to the essentials of the Torah and the roots of the laws, and he resolves the questions of the later authorities out of the teaching of the earlier ones, drawing living water from the source of the spring.

The introduction ends there, seemingly without having told us any of what introductions to such works ordinarily tell us. In truth, it has told us everything we need to know.

R. Margoliyot was born in Lemberg on the seventh of Kislev, 5650. He qualified as a rabbi but remained in business, working eventually as a bookseller, and was active in Mizrachi in Lvov before settling in Eretz Yisrael in the mid-1930s, where he became librarian of the Rambam Library in Tel Aviv (Encyclopaedia Judaica, s.v. Margaliot, Reuben). He never held a rabbinic post and never headed a yeshiva; the library, his only institutional position, came to him after his forty-fifth year. He published more than fifty books, beginning with Toldot Adam on the Maharsha, which appeared in Lemberg in 1912, when he was twenty-two.

Soon after that, he began writing his glosses to the Shulchan Aruch, Nefesh Chayah. In the introduction to that work, written as a memorial to his wife and main source of support, Chayah, he was more explicit about the book’s history, and his own:

“"Had Your Torah not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction" (Ps. 119:92). These words of the divine psalmist I can apply to this book of mine, which I wrote and arranged in the very days of the burning, the days of the World War, after my return from the exile of the refugees of Galicia, having been classified as fit to go out to the field of slaughter. Although I never wished to make use of the crown of Torah, in that hour of danger I said that I must seek my release from military service on the basis of my certificate, since before the outbreak of the terrible war I had already been ordained to render halakhic decisions by the authorization of the kings, our Rabbis. The authorities, however, were in no haste to determine my case, and close to two years passed…

“I was compelled to shut myself away in an inner room until my case should be decided. Were I to say that I would recount everything that passed over me during those two years, this introduction of mine would become a book of memoirs, which perhaps has no claim to a volume of its own. Here I will recall only this: the long winter nights, when I was shut up alone in my room, lacking everything, and lacking even a lamp. Out of fear that the household, seeing a lamp burning all evening, would sense that a man was hiding in the dwelling, no lamp was lit at all. By the light of the flame within the winter stove I studied and wrote, stretched out on the floor. In such a condition of crushed spirit, of which it is said "in the morning you shall say, would that it were evening" (Deut. 28:67), yet together with this within a faithful family circle of pure and holy love, of hope and of the vision of life, I arranged and set in order this book of mine.

“At that time I did not have books enough at hand to slake my thirst and my longing. Afterward, when my documents were confirmed and I was released, before the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, even then I had neither tranquility nor rest. In the days of the terrible pogroms the robbers struck me [word uncertain] and plundered my place of business, leaving not even the gleanings. From then on I was entangled in various burdens I was obliged to take up for the household and for my own home, along with communal affairs and the needs of the public. Even so, in the evening hours granted me from time to time, by the kindness of God I arranged many books in all the branches of Torah, of which some twenty have already been printed. My fortune has been favorable in that these books found much favor in the eyes of all the great and the wise of Israel and are already dispersed throughout the communities of Israel, thank God; and I still have with me many completed compositions which I hope to publish before long.

“The Sages have already stated (Eruvin 55a) that the Torah is found neither among sea-traders nor among peddlers, and so it will certainly not occur to anyone to rely upon me for practical halakha. This is not out of any humility I possess, in the manner of the great authors who write so in their introductions; it is the plain truth. I accept no responsibility whatever on behalf of others, and all my words are only to alert the student. Although many have trodden this ground and it is possible that others preceded me in some of these matters, thank God, any student will see that many are the matters in which room was left for me to say something new. It is a misfortune that on account of the costs of printing I was compelled to omit a great deal…

“It would therefore have been fitting to hide among the vessels. Yet since, thank God, many now study and reflect upon the books I have already published, I hope my colleagues will take pleasure in these words as well, and that the merit of the many will depend upon me. My own intention in preparing these matters for the press is that the pen be passed for the sake of God and the holiness of His Torah.”

In that introduction, he lists many of the books he still hoped to write. In 1957, having pursued his dreams, he was awarded the Israel Prize in recognition of his many contributions. Margoliyot HaYam appeared the following year. The introduction was therefore written by a man who had just received his country's highest recognition for a lifetime of Torah scholarship produced without a chair, without students, and without any of the ordinary support. To introduce that volume, he allowed his Torah to stand alone and speak on his behalf.

Naftali Ben-Menachem's bibliography of his writings, printed in the Sefer Margoliyot memorial volume, records among them a list published in Lemberg in the 1930s, a catalogue of the books in his bookstore. A merchant of seforim, whose own seforim were relied upon by those who came to buy from him, opened his commentary on Sanhedrin with the story of a merchant whose notebooks were relied upon by the sages of his generation, and explained that this earlier merchant had never aspired to a position of authority; he was well aware of the contribution he was able to make from where he was.

R. Margoliyot inspired many to recognize that they had a portion in the Torah as well even if their circumstances limited their time. And those who were able to be more completely devoted were uplifted as well to appreciate the opportunities they had been given (see, for example, the introduction to R. Yaakov Epstein’s Chevel Nachalato, Vol. XIV).

As we remember R. Reuven Margoliyot on his yahrzeit, we honor a man who found his own way to his place in the Torah, who recognized his own journey in that of an earlier figure who had traveled it before him, and who then, with no further explanation, told us this story, trusting us to hear in it that he was asking us to do the same.

However, it is , alas, not that simple. First, there are those who disagree, or, in fact, say the opposite. The Gaon of Vilna was quoted as saying that the mother actually feels anguish upon being sent away when her children are being taken. And yet, for some reason, beyond our understanding, we are nonetheless commanded to do so.

Beyond that, there are the practical details that should be straightforward, but have become mired in disputes. If indeed the mother is sent away as an expression of compassion, it would seem obvious that there is no reason to do so if one has no actual interest in taking her eggs (see Sha’arei Deah, YD 292:4). Indeed, rules the Chatam Sofer (Resp., OC, 100): such an action would be simple cruelty, and should not be done: “instead of learning how not to be cruel, on the contrary, we will train ourselves in cruelty and needless anguish to animals!”. His position was echoed by many others (including Dor Rvi’i to Chulin; Netziv in Meromei Sadeh and Heamek Davar; Torah Temimah, #68; Chazon Ish, YD 175)

However, there were those who took a different position and maintained that the mother should be sent away by anyone who encounters the nest, regardless of whether or not that individual had any interest in the eggs. This opinion too has many adherents, including those who seek out opportunities to fulfill this commandment completely for its own sake, with some believing there is a particular spiritual promise associated with its performance. 

The position dates back to the Resp. Chavot Yair (#67), who in turn cited the Zohar. The sight of the mother forced to fly in circles above her children becomes an evocative image reflecting the picture of Israel in exile. Through this depiction, the hope is that God's mercy will be roused and expressed towards His people.

These two distinctly different understandings of this commandment, completely divergent from each other, were hotly debated and remain the subject of controversy today. (For extensive discussions see: Minchat Asher al HaTorah, Deut. 40; Beit Matityahu, Chulin 33; Resp. Even Yisrael, VII, 43; and especially Resp. HaBari V'HaShema, IV, pp. 663-768). 

But no source on this topic is more confounding than the mishnah (Berakhot 33b and Megillah 25a), which seems to directly squelch any effort to portray this commandment as compassionate. "One who recites [in his supplication] ‘Your mercy is extended to a bird’s nest’…they silence him." This is an exceedingly difficult passage to understand. What could possibly be objectionable about such a statement? Did not King David himself make a declaration of this sort when he stated, “and His mercy is on all of His creations (Ps. 145:9)”?

The writings of Maimonides on this point guide us into perplexity, as he both codifies the ruling of the mishnah (Hil. Tefilah 9:6) and, as noted, asserts the commandment as compassionate in purpose.

Reconciling these seemingly incompatible positions requires a combination of approaches. One possibility, as Maimonides himself notes in the Guide, is that there is simply a multiplicity of opinions and attitudes on the subject. The statement of the mishnah may reflect a perspective that is not necessarily the dominant one.

Beyond that, it is likely that many things are true at once. The commandment to send away the mother bird is indeed about, and in service of, compassion. And yet, for one to include this phrasing in a personal appeal to God, invoking that fact as a form of argument, it is a dangerous distortion. 

The Talmud provides two explanations for the objection to the inclusion of this phrase, in the names of Rabbi Yosei bar Avin and Rabbi Yosei bar Zevida; “he transforms the attributes of the Holy One, Blessed be He, into expressions of mercy, when they are only decrees of the King”. The other is “he engenders jealousy among God’s creations.”

Neither statement is immediately understandable. Are other animals watching to see how we speak about birds? And even more significantly, is there indeed something amiss about believing that God's commandments are directed towards compassion? 

The message of compassion seems to be a highly nuanced one. First and foremost, the attribute of compassion is central to Jewish identity. The Talmud tells us that it is one of the defining attributes that identifies a descendant of Abraham. Abraham himself refines his own compassion through emulating God, the Merciful One, whose own compassion is the trait identified by the Rabbis as the primary focus of imitatio Dei, the mandate to walk in the path of the Divine. It is indisputable that being suffused with compassion is a primary call of Judaism, and a backdrop to the commandments in their totality (see Mishneh Torah, Hil. Shabbat, 2:3) and many of them in specific. 

Nonetheless, it is also true that compassion is a complex emotion, one that can overwhelm rationality and can also make its possessor subject to manipulation by others. It can be true at once that the Torah can repeatedly command compassion, mandate behaviors that are designed to inculcate compassion, and yet also guard against the distortions that can at times surface. 

Both of the Talmud's explanations reflect aspects of this concern.  There is, of course, nothing untoward with identifying compassion within God's attributes and in the commandments He bestows upon His people. However, consider the context in which one may include this reference in a prayer: "Almighty, you are compassionate to birds - clearly You are powerless in the face of Your attribute of mercy. You have no choice but to have pity on me as well."

A formulation such as this not only misunderstands God, it misunderstands the attribute of mercy as well. God is not controlled by the attribute, forced into action he deems inappropriate because he cannot do otherwise. Rather He chooses to express mercy because of its objective value and appropriateness in each circumstance. (See Yad HaMelekh, and Minchat Asher). 

So too, the humans who emulate God are to seek to incorporate a comparable mercy—not one that can blind or distract. Such pitfalls exist; for example, in the vein of the warning of the Rabbis that "he who is merciful on the cruel will ultimately be cruel to the merciful." Divine mercy, the attribute of grace that balances harsh justice with fairness and responsiveness to suffering, is the model for humans as well. 

What does it mean to "arouse jealousy among creations?" It is a magnificent quality to extend one's compassion so far that it reaches the smallest creatures.  However, there is always the risk that the visibility of such extraordinary reach will make these acts a disproportionate priority. The temptation to reap the credit of kindness of this sort often stands in the way of other acts of kindness, which may scream louder and yet inexplicably be rendered inaudible. The performative becomes the priority. “You express your compassion upon the birds”, asks all of creation, including the neediest and the closest to us; “but what about us?”

Rational people are concerned about big things before small things. Great people are concerned about big things and small things. The danger becomes when we are concerned about small things at the expense of big things. 

This risk is present at all times, as the complexities of life abound and confound. It is especially acute during times of war, when the innate compassion of the Jewish soul is forced to reside in bodies compelled to defend themselves, their families, and their nation’s very existence. What damage will the extremities of war wreak upon this precious attribute, and what impediment will that attribute place upon the necessary demands of survival?

The commandment to send away the mother bird, like all the dictates of the Torah, contains multitudes. Its themes and messages are many, some apparent and some perhaps counterintuitive. Yet, again like all commandments, it presents itself first as an action, a behavior that molds character sublimely and subconsciously.  Beyond that, we are asked to speculate, to investigate, and to deepen our encounter with its content and to enhance its impact (see Hil. Temurah 4:13). But we dare not declare too confidently or absolutely that we have grasped its message entirely, for therein lies folly. 

There is an additional theme that has been identified within this commandment, which resonates powerfully in the current moment. There are some who suggest (see Mishneh Torah Hil. Shechitah 13:7 and Ohr Sameach; Heamek Davar; Oznayim LaTorah) that the Torah in issuing this directive is focused not on the compassionate instinct of the human, but of the mother bird. Her reflex upon seeing her children being taken will be to spread her wings in their protection. The human may consider this an opportunity. The mother is now vulnerable, not focused on her own defense; she can be taken as well! To exploit the attribute of compassion, warns the Torah, is disgraceful behavior. It may be legitimate to gather birds or eggs for personal use. But to do so through taking advantage of the animal's innate mercy, and turning it against them, is the antithesis of Jewish character. 

The nation of Israel is currently locked in existential combat with a vicious terrorist organization. That group is evil not only because of its brutality, but because of the damage it seeks to do to the very system of morality itself. The exploitation of the instinct towards decency and kindness through the utilization of human shields, exaggerated and falsified propaganda, holocaust inversion, and the deliberate manufacturing of global condemnation, represents an assault on the idea of righteousness. 

The mother bird is indeed a symbol of compassion:  where it should be expressed; how it should be internalized; why it must be balanced; and perhaps most importantly, how it must be forever respected, preserved, and protected. 

This creates its own question: why, then, does the Torah teach of a concept that has no practical relevance? To this the answer is provided, drosh v'kabel schar, "expound upon it and receive reward". Yet again, the answer prompts a question, this time unaddressed by the Talmud: is there a shortage of material for Torah study? Would the absence of this commandment (or of two others the Talmud discusses in a similar fashion) leave anyone otherwise idle? Surely the applicable commandments are demanding of enough detailed study and analysis to occupy a lifetime.

To some, the point was to highlight the importance of Torah study as an inherently valuable pursuit, apart from the necessities of practical application; to others, the mystical aspects of the Torah, and its representational aspects of the Divine essence, mandated inclusion of a small number of commandments never observed in the physical world.

It seems, however, that there is another meaning, especially consistent with the modern use of the word derashah: sermonize; make homiletic, pedagogical use of these concepts, as there is much to extrapolate and apply from a values perspective, even if the technical details do not materialize.

This is particularly true for the ben sorer u'moreh. The doomed youth, understood by the Talmud as one who is inexorably destined for a criminal future, is described as subject to essentially a "merciful" execution; let him die now, before both he and society suffer the impact and consequences of his eventual misdeeds. Even if this harsh measure was never implemented, the path to that theoretical consequence is undoubtedly valuable to analyze, to search for cautionary lessons as to how to prevent anything similar from manifesting.

The placement of the passage supplies one such lesson before its content does. Rashi (Deut. 21:11), following the midrash, reads the sequence of the captive woman, the hated wife, and the rebellious son as a chain of consequence: the marriage contracted in surrender to desire yields the resented wife, and that household yields the doomed child. In this reading, the son's trajectory is set in motion well before his own first act of rebellion, and the responsibility for it is distributed accordingly.

In this spirit, for example, the requirement that the parents "speak with one voice" is typical. The Talmud relates an interpretation of this to mean that the father and mother literally share one voice (and height and appearance), contributing to the practical impossibility of this materializing. Homiletically, however, the message is apparent: should the parents teach the child contradictory messages, fail to speak with "one voice" regarding moral values and lessons, it is unsurprising that the child will lose all direction and become an unworthy member of society.

There is, however, an even more basic message, that for some reason is often overlooked in sermonic treatments of this commandment. It relates to an issue that draws more attention, the unusual practice of preemptive punishment. This policy not only strikes one as unfair, it is against the standard explicitly associated with Divine justice: "ba'asher hu sham (Gen. 21:17)": one is judged only based on their current status, rather than future misdeeds (Rosh HaShanah 16b).

One approach is to distinguish between differing assessments of "future": if the eventual guilt is based on realities not yet in effect, perhaps known through prophecy or the like (as is the case in the context of that verse and its interpretation), it is indeed unjust to punish a currently innocent individual on that basis. However, sometimes the assessment of the future comes not from prophecy, but from an evaluation of the currently observable trajectory: the process of corruption has begun in such an evident fashion that the future crimes are essentially inevitable, and it is indeed merciful to impede that path from continuing any further.

Seeing the ben sorer u'moreh's criminal future as inevitable, however, makes all the more relevant a crucial detail that has often curiously gone unnoticed. The execution of the ben sorer u'moreh is not mandatory on the parents; they can choose not to pursue this path, a fact clear from the mishnah in that chapter (Sanhedrin 71a, and codified by Maimonides, Hilkhot Mamrim 7:10). Maimonides rules further that if the parents forgive the son at any point before sentence is passed, he is exempt (Hilkhot Mamrim 7:8). The door remains open until it is closed from the inside.

The ultimate fate of the wayward child is not actually inevitable under all circumstances: it is a function of his parents giving up on him, deciding that he has no future. Should they, however, maintain an involvement with him, believe in his potential to change and to grow, his fate is not unchangeably cast. Of course, there are other factors beyond parental influence, and there is never a guarantee of his righteousness regardless of the parents' best efforts and intentions. With those attentions, however, his sad fate is not guaranteed either, and salvation becomes a legitimate hope.

The word "schar" is often taken as "compensation", as if the Talmud here is saying, this commandment's practical irrelevance is no cause for concern, as Torah study will be rewarded regardless. However, as R. Chaim Ya'akov Goldvicht has noted in other contexts, a more accurate rendition might be "the enhancement that results", as in schar mitzvah, mitzvah; the result of performing one mitzvah is the spiritual elevation that makes the next one possible. Here, too, drosh v'kabel schar can mean: consider carefully the themes of this topic, and the result will be a more elevated, prepared, and just society. A powerful thought, indeed.

In Meshech Chochmah (Gen. 9:7), he took up the question of why the commandment to be fruitful and multiply was directed to men and not to women (Yevamot 65b), despite the obviously crucial and central role that women play in allowing that commandment to be realized. To address that question, he pointed to a passage in today's Daf, which quotes, appropriately enough, a woman, Yalta, who stated that there is no Torah prohibition that does not have some comparable experience that is permissible.

R. Meir Simcha took this as a reflection of the Torah's compassion, which expresses itself in refraining from absolute prohibition. The Talmud, in a number of contexts, builds upon the verse: "Its ways are ways of pleasantness, Darchei Noam, and all of its paths are peace" (Prov 3:17). Since childbirth has throughout history been a painful and sometimes dangerous ordeal, the Torah would not obligate women to go through it. He points out that Adam and Eve were jointly commanded to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28) because that was before the curse of pain and childbirth had been administered; after that, the structure changed. As my father. R. David M. Feldman, expressed his position, “It allows the woman the privilege of expressing her maternal instinct in choosing to accept the risk and pain.” (Where There's Life, There's Life, page 29 and page 48.)

Further, were the woman to be absolutely obligated in this duty, if she were married to a man who could not have children, she would be obligated to divorce the man she loves in order to marry one who could help her fulfill this mandate. Given that Torah Law allows a man to have more than one wife, he would not have to make a comparable choice in order to fulfill his commandment.

He posits that several aspects of Torah Law are connected to this principle, including the fact that the Torah only obligates one day annually as a fast day, Yom Kippur, and also commanded eating on the day before so as to lessen its severity.

To further the theme, he points to one of the opening commandments in this week's Torah reading, the “eishet yefat toar”, that a soldier is permitted to marry under very specific circumstances. It is clear from the Talmud (Kiddushin 21b) that this is not desirable. Nonetheless the Torah recognized the desires that human beings find difficult to control, and sought ways to work with that reality to limit such behaviors in a practical way, “dibrah Torah k’neged yetzer hara”.

R. Meir Simcha left no living descendants, no one to recite the Kaddish. On this 100th yahrzeit, a fitting way to provide elevation for his soul would be to consider his teachings and his words, which taught to look for the human being in the mitzvah and for the mitzvah in the human being.

By Rabbi Moses J. Feldman (Los Angeles, California)

Originally published as a five-part series in The Jewish Press (August – September 1961)
Presented in the form of a lecture before the Young Israel of Los Angeles in May 1951

Part One: Early Life, 'Ittur Sofrim', and Early Rabbinates

The Jewish Press • 4 August 1961, Page 18

Editor's Note: Rabbi Feldman is a prominent rabbi and scholar, familiar with the complex historical and ideological cross-currents of the period in which Rav Kook lived, and acquainted with Rav Kook the man. Herewith we present the first of a series of articles on the life of this Spiritual Giant of Israel, in honor of the anniversary of his Yahrzeit and birthday, both of which occur in the month of Ellul. This series was presented in the form of a lecture before the Young Israel of Los Angeles in May 1951.

Our story begins in 1865, with the birth of Avraham Yitzchak Ha'Kohen in Grayeve, near Dvinsk, on the 18th of Ellul, into a family that boasted a number of famed Rabbis and Kabbalists. Since the question of going to public school did not exist in those days, he hurried at the age of four to Cheder, the type of Jewish schoolhouse that despised all the puerilities of the modern kindergarten as well as the 'slow-coaching' in the earlier grades. In two years he mastered the greater part of the Bible and then plunged into Gemara with rare avidity and extraordinary diligence. He continued to advance under various tutors so rapidly that, at the age of fifteen, he went for instruction to Smargon, near Vilna, which was noted for its great scholars. Before long, he was identified as 'the Grayever Illui' (prodigy). On his return home loaded with learning, he became a top-ranking pupil of Rabbi Reuven Dvinsker. At the age of nineteen, he entered by betrothal into a charmed matrimonial alliance with the daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinovitz-Teomim, one of the elite Rabbis of the day, who served in Ponivesz and later in Jerusalem. The next four years he pursued his studies at the Valoszen [Volozhin] Yeshivah and was then ordained by its Dean, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, known by his initials as the 'Netziv' and author of an exhaustive Commentary on the 'She'iltot', classic Halachik work of Rav Achai Gaon. Rabbi Berlin was joined by Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein, who entered the ranks of latter-day Poskim (deciding legists) with his 'Aruch Hashulchan', widely used Commentary on the Shulchan Aruch.

In 1888, at the age of 23, he was appointed Rabbi in the town of Zaumel at the enthusiastic recommendation of no less a personage than Rabbi Yisrael Meir Ha'Kohen, the 'Chofetz Chayim' (American Mizrachi Jubilee Vol. I, P. 260). Young Rabbi Kook soon demonstrated that he was not to lead a treadmill existence nor let the Jewish world pass him by. Could he remain aloof from the new currents and cross-currents driving onwards with gathering force and impact among the resurgent ranks of an oppressed but intellectually vigorous Jewry? He had absorbed too much, reflected too keenly, and reacted too intensely, and even daringly, to keep silent or to settle down to a stereotyped career.

We behold him fare forth with all the confidence, energy, and resourcefulness of an intellectual knight-errant (Cf. Ps. 45:3). He issues a Kol Koray, a rallying call to action. He has a new idea and a new scheme, as he is determined to publish a literary journal which is to be a forum for Rabbis of high standing in the field of Halachah, concerned with intricate questions of Jewish Law that require further debating or clarifying, and with newly arising issues that call for collective and authentic decision. Such a medium soon made its appearance under the title 'ITTUR SOFRIM', which is a Talmudic term referring to certain emendations made in the Biblical text by the Scribes (Ned. 37b). The Hebrew periodicals of his time were of no mean literary calibre and played a much-needed educative and stimulating role; but these were largely for the general intelligentsia eager to have its actual problems, viewpoints, and desires discussed in a cultured or well-cultivated Hebrew. The 'Ha'Asif,' for instance, edited by Nahum Sokolow, presented essays on Rabbinic lore, articles of historical and current interest, literary criticism, biography, poetry, and belles-lettres, much of which is of lasting value. It was excelled in richness of content, variety of subjects, and editorial vigor by the 'Kenesset Hagedolah' that came on the scene in 1890 under the editorship of Yitzchak Suwalsky, who later brought his prolific pen, journalist's ken, and scholar's passion to London. The 'Ittur Sofrim,' however, was designed to be the vademecum for the specialists in Talmudic learning and in the mass of legalistic literature based upon it. Hence, in view of the comparative novelty and ambitiousness of the venture and considering R. K.'s youth, some of the elderly Rabbis were at first skeptical. In his letter of endorsment, the watchful 'Netziv' says rather quaintly that he was afraid the work involved in managing and editing a journal of that genre might lead the estimable R. K. to 'Bittul Torah' (neglect of Torah study); but that, since the latter has procured the services of another Rabbi who undertakes to assist him and be the circulation manager and R. K. stands ready to carry on the project under his father-in-law's guidance, he gladly gives him his approval and blessing, together with some material of his own for publication. He praises his abilities and motives very highly and is encouraged by the favorable response received from a number of outstanding Rabbis.

Once these preliminaries were gotten over with, R. K. came forward in the first issue with a 12-page declaration of policy that is remarkable for its splendor of sentiment and richness of expression. It pulsates with sterling idealism. He deplores the lack of organized contact among the Rabbis and points by way of contrast to the Rabbinical conclaves of previous generations. He has, therefore, undertaken, he says, to set up a literary rallying center for Rabbinic literature, to enable the leading Rabbis to present the fruits of their abundant learning and mature judgement for collective valuation. He notes the growing popularity and importance of various literary organs and urges the spiritual leaders in Jewry to bestir themselves and help establish a circulating Beth Hamidrash such as befits the sacredness of the Torah and the dignity of its devotees; one that will tend to consolidate the positive and creative forces in Judaism as against the centrifugal concepts and trends of certain groups in our midst. He quotes the adage (B. B. 21a) 'Teachers who vie among themselves increase wisdom' and, for some reason or other, felt it necessary to emphasize the difference between Kinnah in the sense of jealousy, which is low and blind, vicious and destructive, and Kinnah that signifies the urge to excel for the purpose of advancing general enlightenment and well-being. It is that urge, he adds, without which the tremendous progress in the various lights of knowledge and endeavor would not have come about.

He goes on to say, with no little modesty and humility, that he subjects himself to the counsel and direction of leading lights among the Rabbis, his aim being to serve to the best of his ability the cause of the Torah 'leshem shomayim,' without any egoistic motives. Now is the time to act, he warns, if we are to keep our vast and manifold heritage from disintegrating and our people from splitting hopelessly into segments. There are burning religious and national questions that demand attention and brook no delay. Descending from the rarefied heights of his objectives to the lowlands of prosaic actualities, and as if he needed to prove his integrity, he announces his decision to donate half of the profits to some worthy charity, such as to subsidize needy students, while intimating, not without gentle sarcasm that, as matters look now, he'll be content if there'll be no deficit. He promises to publish a full financial report, in any case. He was also alert to the fact that there are many who may have inherited manuscripts from Rabbis and other scholars, and he appeals that they turn them in for publication and save them from oblivion. Or else, he is ready to purchase them outright. He winds up with a prayer that is as poetic and idealistic as it is instinct with piety.

The reason I've given you a digest of this manifesto is, because it reveals the foundation on which he reared his glorious career. It shows whole-souled dedication to Torah scholarship in its every phase, bound to an intense desire to help direct its application to new problems of the day. In its phrasing, it exemplifies the mature literary talent of this 23-year-old blossoming sage. It reflects his mighty urge to forge steadily ahead towards the national-religious arena of universal Israel, in order to promote its potentialities as the People of the Divine Book and the magnificent literature and civilization evolved therefrom. He was possessed by the realization that this People has been the principal moral lever of humanity and he resolved to play a decisive part in redeeming the seal of holiness Israel has of yore engraved upon its homeland, a seal that shall never brook any substitute nor counterfeit. No wonder that so ardent an ethicist and eminent a scholar as the Chofetz Chaim set his benignant eye upon him, forasmuch as, to paraphrase Proverbs 20, 11: The one's inherent character and deeds of one's youth foreshadow qualities.

Having devoted two years to this fruitful undertaking, he came out with a treatise entitled 'Chavosh Pe'er' (see Ezek. 24, 17; Dec. 11a) that dealt specifically with the duty of 'putting on' Tefillin. He couldn't have sought publicity for himself, as the book was printed anonymously. More than that, he conducted a one-man crusade by visiting one city after another, holding sermons on the importance of Tefillin and decrying its disuse. That was in Europe, mind you. Seven years later, he was elected Rabbi of Bojsk, succeeding the renowned Rabbi Yechezkel Lipshitz, who went on to assume the envied post in Plotsk.

Four years go by, and we see him step onto the wider stage of Jewry. Articles from his pen began to appear in the monthly journal 'Ha' Peless,' which must have stirred the hearts and minds, changing, stimulating, or stabilizing the thinking, of many who were confused on the relation of Jewish Nationalism to Judaism proper, a subject that had become a highly controversial issue. His first essay discussed 'The Mission of Israel and his Nationhood.' He pointed out the sinister aberrations of the Reform Movement on the one hand, and on the other the No-Man's Land to which the Haskalah Movement and its assimilationist tendencies surely led, developing as they at best did a secular and distorted or disfigured or emasculated nationalism utterly foreign to Israel. He showed up the fallacy inherent in the concept of the Jewish Mission as preached by the Reform spokesmen. He emphasized that, if the ideals of Judaism are to be preserved with the breaking down of the Ghetto walls, Israel as a nation must be preserved, and Israel as a nation can be preserved only by adhering to that discipline and prophetic vision that sustained it throughout the centuries of unparalleled persecution. Judaism and Jewish Nationalism are inseparable and, by the same token, Halachah and Haggadah are to be regarded of equal importance, even as they are interrelated. This latter theme, by the way, was ingeniously adopted by none other than Chayim Nachman Bialik in a well-known study that appeared several years later. Would that R. K.'s articles had been given as wide a circulation at the time as Achad Ha'Am's essays!

Part Two: Zionist Currents, Aliyah to Jaffa, and the Shemittah Controversy

The Jewish Press • 11 August 1961, Page 18

Editor's Note: Rabbi Feldman is a prominent rabbi and scholar, familiar with the complex historical and ideological cross-currents of the period in which Rav Kook lived, and acquainted with Rav Kook the man. Herewith we present the 2nd of a series of articles on the life of this Spiritual Giant of Israel, in honor of the anniversary of his Yahrzeit and birthday, both of which occur in the month of Ellul. This series was presented in the form of a lecture before the Young Israel of Los Angeles in May 1951.

II

Having reached with Rabbi Kook the year 1901, let us list the leading events which by then deeply impressed themselves upon the Jewish world in crystallizing Jewish national aspirations and consolidating all efforts towards their gradual realization. Since the appearance in 1860 and 1862 of Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer's twin works 'Emunah Yesharah' and 'Derishat Tziyon,' in which he expatiated on the religious philosophy of Judaism and beseechingly elaborated on the urgent duty to rebuild Zion for Israel as inherent in said philosophy, considerable progress was made in the colonization of Eretz Yisrael. The initiative was taken by small but valiant groups of idealistic pioneers under the guidance of Kalischer in particular and with much of the financial assistance and moral support, both equally decisive, provided by Sir Moses Montefiore and Baron Edmond de Rothschild, their achievements and tenacity led later to the formation of the more cohesive Chovevei Tzion Movement in which Rabbis and writers from several countries figured actively. During that period, and in the wake of the massacres in Damascus, Moses Hess came forward with his intellectual jewel 'Rome and Jerusalem,' a work of capital importance which M. M. Ussishkin rated higher than Herzl's 'Judenstaat'.

Than Dr. Leo Pinsker with his challenging 'Auto-Emancipation'; then the concerted agitation by Rabbi Samuel Leib Lilienblum, Peretz Smolenskin, and Saul Pinchas Rabinowitz, that gave birth in 1885 to the Kattowitz Conference with the warm blessing of Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan (Spektor) and many of his compeers ('Shivas Tzion', edited by A. L. Slutzki); then the Dreyfus case and the epoch-making emergence of Dr. Herzl, followed by the Zionist Congresses that sparked the essays of Achad Ha'Am. Though on a high plane of speculative thinking and able argumentation and though marked by impressive literary craftsmanship, these essays were of little relevance to the actual scene and the formidable tasks which the situation demanded grappling with. Due also to their tone, they proved to be more provocative and confusing than enlightening and helpful, when united action of a practical nature was imperative and carping dialectics were a nuisance.

In the meantime, there were prominent non-Jews who added their influential voice in behalf of Zionism, whereas Reform Rabbis (whom Herzl called 'Protest Rabbiner') did whatever they could to thwart the self-sacrificing efforts of Herzl, just as they had long since eliminated from their Congregational prayerbooks all mention of Zion To-Be-Rebuilt. Most unfortunately, however, there were some highly placed Orthodox Rabbis enjoying great prestige who could not tolerate the proposition that it was deemed their express obligation to re-enter Eretz Israel as an organized body, as it was implied, forestalling the advent of the Messiah in the traditional sense. All the respectful pleading and searching arguments of Kalischer and his confreres in exposing such a conception as erroneous were of no avail, even while he was engaged in open war with the Reform Rabbis (Ha-hed, Jerusalem, Cheshvon 5695, P. 13; Kisyay Kalischer, Jerusalem, 5707 pp. 180, 367). To be sure, when extremes find themselves on common ground, it is a sad day for those in between.

That was the time when a Jewish National Movement could have been led and spurred on by the vast majority in Jewry whose nationalism was part and parcel of their Judaism instead of by those whose nationalism was detached therefrom. True, many eminent Orthodox Rabbis, including the 'Malbim', Rabbi Meir Leibush ('Shivas Tsiyon', part 2), gifted Bible expositor and great moralist, had explicitly commended all practical Zionistic endeavors, while the Reform spokesmen foamed with anathemas, and must, besides, bear responsibility for creating and cultivating suspicion of Jewish loyalty in the non-Jewish world merely because of Zionism. Nevertheless, Orthodoxy in the mass, which alone had nurtured in its tortured breast the age-old yearning for the Return, was internally deterred, even debarred, from aligning itself with the Movement whose objective it was to speed the implementation of said yearning. Between the growing strength of Jewish Nationalism per se and the spread of an anti-Zionism that was bent on laying the axe to historic Judaism, valiant and steadfast Orthodoxy largely chose to remain aloof from active Zionism, in obedience to a principle as misinterpreted as that of its 'opposite number' was misapplied. Thus, the founding of the Mizrachi Movement in 1901, was indeed a 'miracle within a miracle', blazing a trail of salvation and rejuvenation in ever-growing dimensions. Its guiding genius was Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, a master of the scholarly sermon as well as of Halachah; he who introduced secular studies into the curriculum of East European Yeshivot, even as Samson Raphael Hirsch long before him had done in Germany. Ironically enough, the latter it was who adamantly refused to approve of Kalischer's Zionist activities... Rabbi Reines, then, as Rabbi and fervent activist of Jewish national rehabilitation, proved himself to be a worthy successor of Kalischer and Mohliver. We might add in passing that, in 1904, spurred by the first Mizrachi World Congress, a scathing denunciation of the Mizrachi Movement was issued to all Orthodox Rabbis in Hungary over the signatures of 139 Orthodox Rabbis. (Ha-hed, Ab-Ellul 5698, P. 11).

III

We return now to the activities of Rabbi Kook. In his second essay in the 'Ha'peless', he called upon the Yeshivot to include the Jewish Classics on ethics and religious philosophy and also to train their students in the literary field so as to enable them to carry knowledge to our brethren. In a subsequent article, he again took up the subject of the widely touted Jewish Mission and went on to discuss the moral and national significance of the Mitzvot. And here he ventured a thought which is more than startling. It is revolutionary, yet many of us might well welcome it. By observing 'Issur bassar be'chalav' (prohibition against mixing meat and dairy foods), we may in the course of time come to feel the injustice of slaughtering cattle and fowl for human consumption—and even milk may become taboo! This, as we know, is the ideal of a 100% vegetarian. Now, that would surely eliminate one of the most troublesome problems in Jewish life, namely, the supervision of Kashrut; but I doubt if he ever attempted to meet this problem by advocating either full or part vegetarianism. Not that he didn't have the 'nerve' nor the earnestness to do so; but he could hardly spare the energy and the time it required... However, it can be asserted with certainty that no swine industry, such as now pollutes the State of Israel, would have been tolerated were he living. It would have been shamed out of existence.

Had Rabbi Kook stayed on in Russia or gone to the Continent, it is reasonable to assume that he would have joined the leadership of the Mizrachi. Instead, he received a call from Jaffa in 1903. Despite the pleadings of the Rabbis that he remain at his post, he left for Eretz Yisrael in 1904. That was the year of the tragic death of Dr. Herzl. There, R. K. found himself in his real element in every respect. His genius began to flourish, his spirituality took on sturdier wings, and his capacity for leadership and practical accomplishment developed apace. His first concern was with the educational institutions. He then organized advanced courses of study which he directed and instructed, stressing the laws that would be reintroduced with the reestablishment of a Jewish Nation in Zion—an event he felt was impending—while continuing to mould public sentiment by his articles and publications.

Soon, a matter that had caused the concern of Jews everywhere, was brought to his doorstep. Since the ban against the Etrogim of Corfu was issued by Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan in 1876, the question of obtaining a pure breed of Esrogim at an accessible price and in sufficient quantities, had not been solved. Gradually our own colonists entered the field and added to the scanty supply from Morocco and Italy. With the arrival of R. K., the growers in Jaffa organized themselves into a guild called 'Pri Etz Hadar' under his Hashgacha. The way he shouldered this responsibility, brought him into greater prominence and wider esteem. He published two booklets that contain a first-hand account of what he did together with a detailed discussion of the laws involved.

There loomed up a more problematical question and one of greater dimensions than that of Etrogim, namely, Shemittah. Every seventh year, no plowing, sowing, planting, nor reaping may be done. Back in 1888—the year that R. K. came to the forefront with 'Ittur Sofrim'—the issue became an acute and compelling one, as the following year was a year of Shemittah, and our pioneers had begun to put our fields and vineyards back on the map. With the very existence of the colonies at stake, a heated controversy was stirred up among the Rabbis. Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan stepped into the breach and devised a permissible method, which need not be gone into here. Twenty-one years later, 1910, was another Shemittah year, and R. K. followed the plan put into operation by R. Y. Elchanan, with some stricter provisions and added requirements.

He, however, was not to have 'an easy time' with it. In Safed, there ruled another Rabbinic giant, Rabbi Yaacov David (Ridvoz), author of a Commentary on the Talmud Yerushalmi—a towering figure physically as well as intellectually, whom I recall from his discourses in London. He gave strong opposition to what R. Y. Elchanan had recommended, and a battle royal broke loose. And Rabbi Kook? He publishes another book, called 'Shabbas Ha'Aretz', vindicating his position in full measure. In 1937, thirty-one Responsa of his on this subject saw the light of day. They constitute a most thorough treatment of Shemittah 'in our time'.

Part Three: The London Years, World War I, and the Jerusalem Rabbinate

The Jewish Press • 18 August 1961, Page 18

Editor's Note: Rabbi Feldman is the author of the 'ARESHET SEFATENU' encyclopedia and several works on the Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar, among others. Fully familiar with the complex historical and ideological cross-currents of the period in which Rav Kook lived, he was also personally under the spell of Rav Kook the man. We present herewith the third of a series of articles on the life of this spiritual giant in Israel, to mark the anniversary of his Yahrzeit and birthday, both of which occur in the month of Ellul, fifteen days apart respectively. This series was presented in the form of a lecture before the Young Israel of Los Angeles in May 1951.

In 1913, duly mindful of his stature, the Mizrachi Organization (see Jubilee Volume P. 83, Seq.) with its headquarters in St. Louis, asked him to lend it his moral support and later invited him to attend the Zionist Congress under its auspices. He tactfully replied that he is not yet disposed to declare his definite attitude as between the Mizrachi and the Agudas Yisrael, nor is he able to attend the Congress as he intended. He sternly and repeatedly insists, however, that the Mizrachi enter a vigorous protest against the declaration in the First Congress that 'Zionism has no interest in Religion'. He calls it 'To'evah' (an abomination) and 'Oass Kayin' (a Cain stigma) that must be erased from the Zionist escutcheon. 'We do not', he exclaims, 'strive to rise up and become a nation again in the spirit of modern European literature, but in the spirit of our Torah, in the spirit of our Prophets, in the spirit bestowed by G-d upon His people Israel that cannot be sundered from the Torah and its continuing vitality, in that it is the 'heritage of the Congregation of Jacob'. The divine ideals embodied in the scheme of life set forth by the Torah and the Prophets, are implicit in our aspirations for the future of the world, and the objective of our rejuvenation is to have them brought into effect. We aim to take our place in the center of humanity, only under our noble banner which, ancient as it is, is our everlasting pride. Our banner proclaims the Name of our G-d and, as in the past, we shall not barter it nor exchange it for any other, be it the most modern of all!' He also applauds the rousing protest Achad Ha'Am had made many years ago against certain un-Jewish doings in Tel Aviv.

The following year 1914, he was on his way to Zurich to attend a Conference of the Agudas Yisrael when World War I broke out. He couldn't return to Palestine as it belonged to Turkey, an ally of Germany. After some months, he was called to London, to head the Mach'zikay Hadass Congregation, the most dynamic and militant Orthodox organization in England at that time. Ever since its founding around 1890, it remained independent of the United Synagogue and its Chief Rabbi, Orthodox though they were, with all the authority they exercised through a wide network of Synagogues and Schools capped by the supervision and regulation of Kashruss, and despite the status they enjoyed as the official representatives of British Jewry. Led by Rabbi Avraham Abba Werner, it set up its own Shechitah and Kashruss control. Under its wings, a huge Talmud Torah edifice echoed to the rhythmic class-recitals of several hundred pupils during the intensive, three-hour sessions held five days a week. This Talmud Torah became an unfailing reservoir for the Yeshivah Etz Chayim in London which was piloted by distinguished Roshay Yeshivah from Eastern Europe on a schedule and a curriculum such as they themselves had gone through, until a program of secular activities was introduced. Memorable is the students' coming and chanting of the Gemara rehearsals on Thursday nights till the wee hours of the morn, with an ecstasy and worshipful fervor that ably orchestrated the intellectual and spiritual symphonies of Israel's sages across the ages.

The leadership of the Mach'zikay Hadass never faltered and its prestige never waned, keeping the membership ever in ferment with controversial issues vis-a-vis the Community at large. Its vast Synagogue structure, formerly a Church, developed into a veritable powerhouse of piety and higher learning, that was unique even in London, as a true replica of the combined Beth Hamidrash and Beth Hakenesset that was the rule in Europe, continuously 'in operation'. With the electricity shut off for the night, after the regular Talmud 'seminars' attended daily by scores of learned men from all walks of life, there was always someone absorbed in a Gemara by candle-light till late past midnight. Indeed, much of the intensification and the spread of Traditional Judaism in London and in the Provinces, can be attributed to the moral impact and influence that emanated from that great religious center.

Hence, in occupying its cathedra, R. K. at once became the cynosure of admiration and expectation among all elements in British Jewry. Worthy of mention too, is his weekly Shiur at the Yeshivah, followed by a discussion of Jewish philosophy. We were once rather startled, when he told us that he had read Shakespeare in the German. Nor was his presence ignored in Government circles. When the Home Secretary, Herbert Samuel, a very gentlemanly tyrant, proposed that Russian-born Jews living in England be returned for military service to the Czar whose oppression they had erstwhile fled, R. K. protested most forcefully against the evident cruelty involved. Under pressure from Parliament, the decree was withdrawn (Ha-hed, Adar, 5698, P. 12).

The War continued its relentless course of unprecedented bloodshed, horror, and destruction. Times filled with gravest peril and dread loomed ahead, with the prevailing mood one of fatalistic resignation to the prosecution of a far-flung conflict the end of which none could foresee. It was, perhaps, for the purpose of bolstering up morale and perseverance that the Allies declared that they were committed to a 'War to end War'. Also, the patience of neutral America was nearing the breaking-point, what with German submarines spreading death and terror within striking distance of its Atlantic seaboard and what with German subversives inland. On April 6th, 1917, the U.S. entered the fray. Meanwhile, the British Government had been searching for some psychological device towards breaking the stalemate by means of mobilizing the sentiment of world-Jewry, which meant American Jewry principally. Apart from a like attempt, a hypocritical one, made by the Austrian and German Governments in promising to foster Jewish settlement in Palestine after the War, the British were deeply impressed by the record of the Zion Mule Corps, composed mostly of Jewish volunteers who, at the spur of Joseph Trumpeldor and led by Col. Patterson, fought with great prowess in 1915-16. The Government, therefore, acceded to the demand of Vladimir Jabotinsky for a Jewish Legion under British command. Its purpose was to help liberate Palestine for the Jews, throw a shield over the Suez Canal, and strengthen the offensive arm of Gen. Allenby's troops in the Jordan area.

Actually, an official British declaration in favor of a Jewish Palestine was drawn up soon after America joined the Allies, namely about six months before November 2nd, 1917 when the Balfour Declaration was issued but it was blocked by powerful anti-Zionists, Jews, among them, who forced through, or rather yielded to, but a modified version thereof. Preceding this momentous event, the conferences between Community leaders and Zionist spokesmen in which R. K. participated, were frequent and charged with emotion born of a sense of approaching destiny. Buttressed by the Jewish Legion, Allenby's forces marched into Jerusalem December 9, 1917. With the ending of the war, November 1918, R. K. was named head of the Rabbinate in Eretz Yisrael. In 1924 he visited America in company with two fellow-celebrities, Rabbi Abraham Shapiro of Kovno and Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein of the Slobodka Yeshiva, in behalf of the Yeshivot in Europe and Palestine. The visit as such, was a powerful stimulus for a cross section of Jews 'of means' across the country to re-identify themselves with the full-scale pattern of Jewish education and idealism provided by European Yeshivot. R. K. was royally acclaimed at the City Hall in New York, while R. Moshe M. Epstein traveled by train to Chicago and all the way to Los Angeles, where he was accorded great honor. Many among those who responded 'handsomely', were in later years drawn in by the Liberals among the Conservatives.

Five years later, a savage pogrom was let loose by the Arabs, that resulted in the massacre of many students at the Hebron Yeshivah in addition to the murder and pillage among the population. R. K. was seen frequently in the hospitals by the side of the wounded. He appeared at the mimic or mock hearings of the two-faced Shaw Commission, not merely to protest any whittling down of the Balfour Declaration that was contemplated, but lambasted its members for their cold-blooded sadism in the face of wanton bloodshed and rapine along with the official treachery that had made such anarchy possible. The appeal he addressed to the shocked and distressed Jewish Community, bidding it stand fast for the sake of Israel as a whole and the destiny that awaits it, is a classic (Ha-hed, Adar, 5698 P. 11; Cheshvon, P. 20). Sublimating the uniquely tragic situation of the Jew, he never tired of dwelling on the certainty of Israel's vindication and rehabilitation. Boldly he defended the Revisionist leader Stavsky whom the British arraigned for murder. He secured his release by appealing to the Archbishop of Canterbury and re-affirming his innocence. Ever and anon he roused his brethren to support the Keren Kayemet and Keren Hayesod.

In the Yeshivah he founded, known as Mercaz HaRav, the advanced students were required to study the Kuzri and make two readings weekly of the 'Mesilas Yesharim', masterly treatise on religious ethics by Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, a versatile genius among the scholars, pietists, Kabbalists, and poets in the 18th century. The latter work, published in Hebrew and Yiddish, had become a popular guidebook of individual self-discipline; and while its influence was felt where learning was at a minimum, it restored ethical training to its due place as a close companion of academic learning. Obviously, it was characteristic of R. K.'s essential manhood to have insisted on including this high-minded exposition of human duty in his top-level curriculum. By the year 1935, R. K. had some 30 volumes to his credit. These were climaxed by a monumental excursus on the Talmud, called 'Biruray Halachah', where he critically examines the argumentations and determines the law to be followed. To present it in extenso with the Talmudic text, necessitates a newly laid-out edition of the Talmud.

Thus, our 23-year-old, idealistic editor of the 'Ittur Sofrim' crowned his literary career in a way which showed that he embodied an academy in himself. Nor did the subject of Bible Criticism escape his attention. He pleaded for funds (Ha-hed, Cheshvon, 5695, P. 31) to enable the publication of Rabbi Isaiah Reicher's works (Torass Horishonim; Imre Bais Yisroel; Ni-vim) that refute what the notorious practitioners on the Bible, with their defective knowledge or biased approach or overstretched imagination, have striven to build up. To illustrate the timbre of R. K.'s thoughts, we present a few excerpts from his writings and follow them up with several episodes that reveal him in action.

Part Four: Philosophical Synthesis, Orot, and Ideological Critiques

The Jewish Press • 25 August 1961, Page 18

Editor's Note: Rabbi Feldman is the author of the 'ARESHET SEFATENU' encyclopedia and several works on the Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar, among others. Fully familiar with the complex historical and ideological cross-currents of the period in which Rav Kook lived, he was also personally under the spell of Rav Kook the man. We present herewith the third [fourth] of a series of articles on the life of this spiritual giant in Israel, to mark the anniversary of his Yahrzeit and birthday, both of which occur in the month of Ellul, fifteen days apart respectively. This series was presented in the form of a lecture before the Young Israel of Los Angeles in May 1951.

Among his pungent comments on the Passover Haggadah (See 'Maggid'), we come across the following definition of Freedom, which I would characterize as a comprehensive condensation, though this may sound as self-contradictory as the proverbial 'suspended animation.' It does indeed contain a paradox, yet is succinct enough to serve as a touchstone or criterion: 'One has full freedom,' he declares, 'only when one is able in complete freedom to assume servitude (lit. to 'enslave oneself'), where it be fitting to do so, and where such servitude betokens true freedom. This is what Isaiah implied in conveying the divine reassurance: Fear not, O Jacob my servant' (44,2) (See Areshet Sefatenu, Vol. I, p. 49). Lest this statement appear to be self-revolving, with the third proviso a re-wording of the first and even at variance with the opening theme, I presume that what he means is that, subservience, when assumed voluntarily and fittingly is commendable only if it be designed to serve a higher type of freedom, or some ideal that does not spell hurt to anyone unjustifiably or avoidably. Otherwise, it is a form of sheer abjectness or simply a case of irresponsible expediency for one purpose or another and is, therefore, not freedom but opportunism. But, if R. K. is speaking of a condition described as 'Avduth be'sokh cherut' or 'Cherut be'sokh avdut,' can either of them be said to represent absolute freedom, even if it not merely does not hinder one from attaining worthy ends but also enables one to do so? I'll leave this open. However, one can get a better understanding of his underlying thought here, from his brilliant comment on 'Korekh.'

In his 'Orot,' he very pointedly observes: 'The soul of Israel mirrors forth Righteousness in its most absolute form. When consummated, it reflects the highest ethical good in action. Hence, any unethical divergence or aberration which the individual Jew is guilty of, weakens his bond with the collective soul of the nation.' This throws a strong shaft of light on the Jew's distinctive role and commitment.

Another dictum of his runs: 'While penitence lifts man above all the degrading influences in the world, it does not estrange him from the world. Rather, it is he who raises the world's moral standard along with his own.' Now, while this adumbrates an ideal desideratum, it is at variance with a familiar passage in Berachot 34b which raises the merit of the penitent on so high a pedestal that the normally righteous and conforming is considered unable to come near him. Moreover, in actuality a penitent is usually shown but little cordiality or even confidence by his fellows. And even if they admit that he has become superior to them, their very sense of inferiority sooner generates in them a gentle cynicism or smugness than a desire to rise higher.

In one of his didactic letters, published under the general title 'Igrot,' R. K. allows himself the following liberalistic or unreservedly optimistic flourish: 'At long last, the divine illumination that burst upon the world some three millennia ago by means of the Torah, has become so effective as to have dispelled the type of religious heresy that prevailed in the past. In our day, even the most obnoxious ideas are linked with a demand for righteousness and justice such as Abraham taught and handed down to his progeny and which Scripture calls 'the way of the Lord' (Gen. 18, 19)' (Ha-hed, Cheshvan 5696 p. 28). Frankly, this was more visionary than realistic. Looking far ahead, he overlooked the fact that Marx, the most challenging and influential apostle of social justice in modern times, not only denounced the Jew most bitterly but declared Religion as an opium that must by all means be destroyed. Neither did R. K. foresee the application of Marx's principal teachings along with his ruthless fanaticism in Russia; not to speak of the perfidy and brutality of the Yevseks whose hostility to Judaism served as a lever for the forced dissolution of Jewish life by the Soviet tyrants. Even the charge that Communist Russia was infested with antisemitism masked or under prudent control, was branded by their comrades in America as 'another Big Lie.'

He may have had in mind the general lessening of open religious intolerance and the wider insistence on the principles of justice towards followers of all religions including the Jewish. But, that is not what the verse he quoted primarily meant. Or, he may have intended to echo the supposition the Rabbis ventured that, the Divine would rather they forsake Him, if they only abided by the Torah, for by living in its brilliance they would feel induced to return to Him (Jer. Hag. 1, 7; Intro. Lam R. 2; See Areshet Sefatenu I, p. 279 and Supplements II and III). Still, the Socialist Democrats in Germany did not give battle to Hitler, nor does it need pointing out that the leading Communist regime exemplifies the most flagrantly blasphemous repudiation of the spirit of the Torah and is far removed from the 'way of the Lord.' But, who could have expected a relapse into barbarism and terrorism on so huge a scale as the Nazi and the Russian that laid their withering hands upon the world? Perhaps, he anticipated the Moral Rearmament movement that has been sobering up many a nation that would have been lured by the Communist siren or carried away by the Nazi insanity. If so, he was in line with the Prophets of old. Indeed, he opined that 'the brothers' love as between Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob will yet assert itself over and above all the raging hatred and interlocking struggles'; meaning, probably, that, since said love actually never did exist, it is destined to come as one of the miracles of the Messianic era.

Writing on proselytism (Ha-hed, Nisan 5696), he tells of a singular case in which he was personally involved and is of interest to every religionist. A minister of one of New York's prominent and wealthy churches, had adopted the Jewish Faith and settled in Jerusalem where he gave himself up to Jewish study till he became a Rabbinic scholar. His name was Rabbi Avraham Yaacov and was known as Leon Ger Hatzedek. He came to Rabbi Kook, when the latter was Rabbi in Jaffa, with a remarkable request. He had seen R. K.'s biography ('Eder Hayakar') of his revered father-in-law Rabbi Eliyahu David Rabinowitz and was so fascinated by the portrayal and enthused over the fact that Judaism produces spiritual personalities of so noble a type, that he decided to translate the booklet into several European languages. Would Rabbi Kook permit him to do so?

Gladly acquiescing, R. K. engaged him in intimate questioning so as to discover how he was induced to leave his lucrative ministry for Judaism. The former churchman replied that, he was always convinced that man cannot acquire actual greatness by means of any secular culture and that without the sanctity of divine faith no man, be he well-versed in ethics and in philosophy, can attain to the distinctive stature that reflects the divine image. He also realized, however, that only a religious faith free from every vestige of idolatry was capable of producing the ideal person. Proceeding to examine his religious beliefs by this criterion, he sorrowfully concluded that he could not adhere to his religion without countenancing idolatrous ideas. Yes, he knew of those who rationalized their theology so as to make it appear to be free from creedal dross, but he couldn't accept their illusory quibblings. Thus, he suffered inwardly until he was introduced to the utter purity of Israel's historic Faith, finding therein complete gratification for his thirsting soul. And R. K. points to this type of proselyte as the one which the Rabbis had in mind when they declared that 'the righteous in Israel and the righteous proselyte be cited together in the Amidah prayer' (Meg. 17b, end). Our model proselyte was even known to have laid plans to found a school for similar candidates; but he was not heard from after he left for Europe on the eve of World War I. (Ha-hed, Iyar 5696, p. 16).

When comforting his people, R. K. quoted Micah's apostrophe: 'Rejoice not over me, O my enemy! Though I be fallen, I am about to rise; though I sit in darkness, God is a light unto me' (7, 8), stressing the phenomenon that no sooner did Israel fall than it rose to a higher estate than it had occupied before; catastrophe was followed not merely by restoration but by a reinvigoration of its moral and spiritual capacities. It was also his conviction that, the fulfillment of the final forecast of the last Prophet, Malachi, 'And he shall turn the heart of the fathers unto the children and the heart of the children unto their fathers,' can come about only in the land of Israel.

Back in 1905, he composed a hymn, 'Ha' Emunah,' to be sung like the Hatikvah. He published in London a fascinating booklet, containing an exquisite system of instructive symbolism as pictured by the shaping of the Alef Bet. He was also prolific in expounding his ideology under the title 'Degel Yerushalayim,' distinguishing Jerusalem from Zion.

[Note in Original Publication: In the Second article in this series, line 4 of paragraph 2 should have read: 'Rabbi Samuel Mohliver, Moshe Leib Lilienblum;' the Kattowitz Conference was in 1885 rather than 1865; 'ferrid' should have been 'fervid'. We regret these typographical errors.]

Part Five: Eyewitness Encounters, Personal Anecdotes, and Final Assessment

The Jewish Press • 1 September 1961, Pages 18 & 19

Editor's Note: Rabbi Feldman is the author of the 'ARESHET SEFATENU' encyclopedia and several works on the Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar, among others. Fully familiar with the complex historical and ideological cross-currents of the period in which Rav Kook lived, he was also personally under the spell of Rav Kook the man. We present herewith the fifth of a series of articles on the life of this spiritual giant in Israel, to mark the anniversary of his Yahrzeit and birthday, both of which occur in the month of Ellul, fifteen days apart respectively. This series was presented in the form of a lecture before the Young Israel of Los Angeles in May 1951. Communications may be addressed to the author at 135 S. Kingsley Drive, Los Angeles 4, California.

VI

We pass on to the episodes. A scene I witnessed and which is well described by Rabbi Simeon Glitzenstein, R. K.'s personal aide (Hahed, Ab-Ellul 5698, P. 10), took place at one of the late Sabbath afternoon repasts in the Rabbi's home in the East End of London. These were regularly attended by every type of Jew; the pietist and secularist, the Chassid and Marxist, the Torah scholar and modern professional, all drawn by the power of his personality and eloquence and submitting to the spell of his coruscating wisdom. It was during the Succoth week, October of 1917, a time when the Allies were nearing a decisive crisis, as indicated earlier in our account.

The Jewish Community had for long been plagued by the treacherous and obstructionist machinations of an organization that called itself 'The Society of British Jews,' whose ideology and aims were the same as those of the 'American Council for Judaism' but whose leaders were far superior to those of the Council in intellectual attainment, general prestige, and the ability to exert influence in Government circles. They were unrelenting in their opposition to Zionist objectives, the more so when they saw those objectives coming nearer to realization.

It was natural, therefore, that at this Sabbath assembly, the discussion should center around the question of practical Zionism. It was precipitated by several who belonged to the Frankfurt-am-Main School of Orthodoxy, whose antagonism to Zionism was fed and led by the Agudas Yisrael and its forerunners. When one of them, as a noted agronomist, argued against the feasibility of Jewish national rehabilitation in Palestine, R. K. rewarded him with a crushing rebuttal that lasted almost two hours. He then rose and, with the self-assurance of an inspired seer, delivered himself as follows: 'I am certain the day is not far distant when Jews will make every effort to emigrate to Eretz Yisrael, not only for the sake of the sacred ideal, but also with the same purpose of establishing themselves economically that actuates those that hie to America!' About a month later, the Balfour Declaration reverberated throughout the world, proving to have been the harbinger of May 1948.

A parallel incident, even more dramatic and gripping, is related by Rabbi Schulman (Ha-hed, Cheshvon 5696) to have transpired in Jerusalem at a time when R. K.'s malignant disease was sapping his vitals. Even then he had no thought of retiring from public life. Neither would his opponents and vilifiers think of moderating their attitude or easing up their hostility. There walked into his chamber a follower of the Munkatch Rebbe, heaping abuse on the new Jewish settlement and condemning the very idea of restoring in Palestine a self-governing Jewry by our own efforts. R. K. quoted copiously from the Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar, to prove the high merit of these brave and industrious pioneers. Then, with deepest emotion, he exclaimed: 'If Moses allowed himself to vent his anger on tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Menasheh men of valor and dignity, whom he suspected of trying to evade taking part in the conquest of the Promised Land (Num. 32, 14), of what value is our piety and self-righteousness while we today hold back from re-building the Holy Land?? There can be no forgiveness for such dereliction!!' This stinging rebuke, certainly deserved wide publicizing.

Here is a portrayal by Tsvi Mirsky (Ha hed, Shevat 5678, p. 2), under the heading 'One Hour with the Rabbi': 'Summer 5691 (1931), reports were received by the Central League for Sabbath Observance from its branches in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Petach Tikvah, and elsewhere, of the glaring cases of public Sabbath desecration on the part of various institutions and organizations. We called a special meeting of the Executive Board. Outstanding Rabbis and laymen attended. They resolved that, since the 17th Congress was soon to be held, the Rabbi be requested to dispatch an open letter to the Congress, stressing the great moral damage and the disgrace, and urging it to take the necessary measures to shake the evil. I and a fellow-member were delighted to convey the Resolution to the Rabbi in person. The same evening at about 9:30, we carried out our mission. On entering his study, we found him absorbed in writing. Tomes of the Talmud, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch, etc., were stacked high all over the table. Giving us his immediate attention, he expressed wholehearted agreement with our decision; but we hardly imagined that he would interrupt the writing he was immersed in and compose there and then the letter we requested. A message of that nature required time for reflection and careful wording. To our great amazement, he took pen in hand and in fifteen minutes handed us his statement. It was carried by the Press in Eretz Yisrael and in other countries, leaving a deep impression.

As we rose to leave, the door was flung open and there walked in a constable leading by the hand a lad who appeared to be half unhinged. As a recent arrival in the country, he had gone sight-seeing in Jerusalem and then headed for the ancient Synagogue of Rabbi Yehudah HaChassid. On finding the door locked, he proceeded to force it open. Police were notified and he was taken under arrest. On the way to the police station he tearfully begged the officer to bring him to the Rabbi who, he claimed, knew him and would vouch for him. We on our part, were incensed at his blubberings and his daring to disturb the Rabbi at so late an hour. The great-hearted Rabbi, however, showed no anger whatsoever. He immediately put in a call, and the lad was set free. What a wonderful man, we thought to ourselves, and what a superior personality he is in every respect!'

Similar testimony is adduced by Rabbi Gilcenstein (Ha-hed, Adar 5696, p. 12), who, after recalling certain of R. K.'s valiant activities which he had closely observed in London, concludes with the following nugget of psychological insight that holds true everywhere: 'Where there are those who distinguish themselves in shielding the individual but have no urge to act in behalf of public causes; while others go all out for the Community but lack a sense of duty towards the individual. R. K. was ready at any time to offer himself both for the community and for an individual. It is this total commitment of his which was his distinctive grandeur.'

The spirit that animated him in his literary work, is well-exemplified in this back-stage conversation pertaining to his glossary on the Vilna Gaon's annotations to the Choshen Mishpat. When he was told that Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer praised this particular work very highly, he remarked: 'I've always had a strong desire to assist in the Beth Hamidrash of the Gaon.' While engaged in this work, 'I felt as though I was in his presence, handing him the various standard tomes of Rabbinic learning.' After a few moments' silence, he added, with tear-filled eyes: 'Praise G-d for the little that I was worthy enough to collaborate with the Gaon!' (Ha-hed, Cheshvon 5696, p. 9).

An idea of R. K.'s psychic endowment can be formed from the two incidents reported by Rabbi Abraham Chen of Tel Aviv (Ha-hed, Kislev, 5695), and first related by a distinguished member of the Jerusalem Community in the course of the eulogy he delivered at the Rabbi's last rites. He witnessed these incidents personally: 'I once came to the Rabbi's home late at night when the house was wrapped in darkness. Suddenly I saw a flame streak across the house, lighting up the visage of the Rabbi as he sat poring over the Zohar, absorbed in the metaphysical mechanics of the Ma'asay Merkavah beneath a halo of glory.'

One day, the same speaker came to R. K. and suggested that they go to the Synagogue for the regular service. 'I can't,' he answered, 'I'm all afire now with the love of G-d, I'm afraid I may be consumed if I go into the Synagogue now. Let us take a stroll and chat a little, until the blaze in me subsides.' Rabbi Schulman relates (Ha-hed Cheshvon 5696) further that Rosh Chodesh Tamuz 5695, two months before R. K.'s demise, as he was to be taken to a sanitarium, Rabbi Yaacov Moshe Charlap (See Ha-hed, Cheshvon 5696, p. 29), his most esteemed and devoted pupil, came to visit him. When he gave him the customary greeting for 'a good and blessed Chodesh,' R. K. replied with a prayer: 'May it be God's will that this month shall be turned to one of happiness and the Mazel be changed!' Never having heard him speak of the planets in their relation to human fortune or destiny, R. Charlap was puzzled as to what the Rabbi could have meant. When he learned the nature of his master's disease, he recalled that the planet marked for the month of Tammuz is indeed known as Cancer (Sartan, in Hebrew). What a grim pun!

Another close-up view is provided by Moshe Smilansky (Ha-hed, Adar 5699, p. 26), well-known writer on the life of Jewish pioneers in Palestine. He tells the following as related to him by Pinchas Rutenberg, the famous electrical engineer who accomplished wonders in expanding and quickening the growth of Jewish Palestine and who was deeply attached to Rabbi Kook. Noting the humble simplicity of the Rabbi's home, Rutenberg asked him what he could do to ease his material circumstances. The Rabbi replied: 'If a Foundation Fund of 10,000 pounds were set up so that I could establish a Yeshivah on a firm footing I would go on living for its sake.' Not realizing the actual intent or implication of R. K.'s words, his answer was that the most he is able to do is to give him 1,000 pounds which he can use as he pleases. A long time later, Rutenberg who was then in London, received a letter from R. K. informing him that, since he (R. K.) hasn't much longer to live, he deposited in a bank the 1,000 pounds he had received from him, as he fears the money will not be used for the proper purpose after he is gone. Rutenberg hardly had time enough to make a decision before R. K. passed on. With sorrowful reverence, he shortly raised the 10,000 pounds determined to build a Yeshivah in Yavneh on the very site where R. Yochanan ben Zakkai's Academy once flourished. Smilansky, however, proved to him the impracticability of that particular spot and another one near by was agreed upon. Alas, the murderous Arab outbreaks in 1936-38, disrupted the undertaking. On the day of his death, Rabbi Kook remarked to his physician, the internationally renowned Prof. Loudek: 'I hope and believe that, all great Jewish thinkers and scientists will finally recognize the Jewish Faith and profess belief in the Creator.'

SUMMARY AND ESTIMATE

Despite his erudition that befitted his high office, despite his sterling character which none could in good conscience impugn, and despite his luminous spirituality that was beyond minimizing except by the malicious, Rabbi Kook was pilloried and harassed by oversensitive or senseless elements because of his friendly relations with non-religious groups. They disregarded the fact that he drew a distinction between irreligious leaders and the youth they led. He was bitterly attacked and maligned by certain leaders of another Orthodox organization, for refusing to turn his back on the Mizrachi with all its impressive achievements and immense potentialities in behalf of a Torah-centered Zionism and a Zion-centered Judaism, even while he was in full accord with the objectives of said organization. He labored for the unification of all Orthodox groups in Eretz Israel, but his opponents fought him on that too. Worse, then, than merely having misjudged his convictions and far-sighted wisdom, is the probability that they begrudged him his eminence and authority. These feuds, thrust upon him for no legitimate reason, frittered away his mental and physical energies, forcing this man of holiness and tenderness, this true Kohen in spirit as in lineage, this brave defender and dedicated servant of his people, to quaff deeply from the Kos Hataraylah. By engendering strife and distrust, they demoralized Jewish religious life in Palestine and prevented its healthy and cohesive development. Dr. Ismar Elbogen, 'A Century of Jewish Life,' p. 609, a non-partisan historian, puts the matter capsule-fashion, thus: 'He regarded the possibility of actualizing ancient Jewish dream as so miraculous a dispensation, that he welcomed anyone who would cooperate towards this achievement. A man of deep, mystic faith and scrupulous observance, yet he rejected no one who thought and lived differently than he did He wished to embrace all, observant and non-observant alike, and trusted to the power of love as had Hillel of old, to bring man nearer to the Torah.' I would interpolate here that, while leaving a decisive and lasting impression on Talmudic scholarship, he succeeded in reorienting a large section of Jewry—including the followers of that other Organization—who needed redirecting and preparing for the most challenging and destiny-laden years ahead.

With his exalted love for Eretz Yisrael, recalling that of a Yehudah Halevi, and his unresting desire to see there a Jewish polity again in being, he rightly combatted any passivity or false reasoning or misconstrued credo that could not but obstruct and even frustrate any step towards its realization, and thereby inure the onrush of a colossal catastrophe. He emphasized the irrationality of the fraud of removing Judaism from its national mould, and likewise the self-delusion and moral downfall involved in divorcing Jewish Nationalism from Judaism. The Jewish Nation shall remain a religious organism, so functioning in its own highest interests and in the best interests of humanity at large.

As a Jewish religionist and one possessed by a profound admiration and concern for his people, he revealed an ardor, a poetic temperament, and a pulsating historical sense, reminiscent of our grand liturgical poets dating many centuries ago whose compositions, supplementing and interpenetrating the standard prayers, helped relieve the woe, lift the morale, and maintain the equipoise of a perennially persecuted people in exile, by ennobling its pride, glorifying its agony, and feeding its pristine faith. In his mystical yearnings and searchings, he was as constant and alert as many a master of Kabbalistic lore.

As a scholar, he was comprehensive, analytic, resourceful, and definitive. Consistently upholding Jewish Law in all its ramifications, he delighted to invest the ritual duties with symbolic significance of high moral or ethical of spiritual value, not by resorting to rationalization, in whatever sense we may use the term—as much as by dint of idealization such as meets the need for elevating our thinking and hallowing our actions. His mind partook of certain distinctive attributes of a Maimonides and a Nachmanides, both Bachyas, and Isaac Aramah, in juristic apperceptiveness, humanistic sensitivity, moral dynamism, religious passionateness, mystical longing, and philosophical outreaching, as derived from the Torah and its massive amplification in the incomparable laboratory of its authentic expounders.

His spiritual faculties were cultivated to a degree that raised him onto a pinnacle of supreme importance. Enraptured idealist that he was, he always fought clean, even as his exhortations (Ha-hed, Tishri, 5695, p. 8; Cheshvan, 5695, cover,) and chastisements (Ha-hed, Cheshvon, 5695, p. 3. Very moving,) were free from any desire to dominate. Pettiness and vainglory, subterfuge and pretense, were utterly alien to him. Ever eager to teach, and inspire, he was a shining exemplar of his teachings. From the pulpit and in the hall of learning, he could blaze away for hours on end, his oratorical power being the counterpart or complement of his literary urge.

His essays, such as the 'Orot,' and particularly his poems, (see this writer's translations in 'The Jewish Forum,' August, 1954) are quite difficult to translate, it is due to their highly imaginative and often hyperbolic style, intertwined as his thinking was with Biblical and Rabbinic and Kabbalistic phrases and idioms of a metaphoric nature; notwithstanding the modern texture of his vocabulary. In some chapters, he climbs the same peaks and reaches the same spheres as does the Zohar, but without involving himself in some of its conceptual admixtures, esoteric abstractions, and terminological media, where the latter are employed for ninking [linking] comparisons that are more baffling than conceivable or intelligible.

All in all, Rabbi Kook imaged forth in his public and private life, the moral, spiritual, and intellectual qualities that betoken human excellence as set down by Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair (Vari-lent texts; Jer. Shek. 3, 3; Shah 1, 3; Avodah Zarah 20b; Mishnayos Sotah, end,) himself a figure of singular nobility.

Fortunate those who observed him in person, and have not played his ideals or his memory false. Spiritually enriched will all be who cherish his legacy. 'The righteous shall be held in remembrance for ever' (Ps. 112, 6).

Original Publication Errata & Postscript:
• Editor's Note: Rabbi Kook occupied a cathedra, not a cathedral, as mistakenly printed in the third series. In that same article, column 4, the edition of Ha-hed is Adar 5698 instead of Ellul. We regret these typographical errors.
• Author's Postscript: My cordial appreciation to Edward Zipperstein, dynamic and outstanding leader of the Los Angeles Young Israel, at whose instance, as President, the above Lecture was presented and thereupon slated for publication by said Organization. Also, my heartfelt thanks to my son, Rabbi David M. Feldman, for his signal help in preparing the proofs, amidst a busy professional schedule.

This interpretation appears to contradict an explicit passage in the Talmud (Horayot 2a). The Mishnah there discusses the liability of an individual who acts based on a mistaken ruling from the Great Sanhedrin. The Gemara concludes that the individual is liable for a sin offering, stating that "he erred in the mitzvah to listen to the words of the Sages" and should have known the ruling was incorrect. The Talmud Yerushalmi reflects this position, stating in apparent blatant contradiction to the Sifrei: “One might think that if they say to you about right that it is left, and about left that it is right, you should listen to them. The verse therefore teaches, 'to the right or to the left'—meaning, they will say to you about right that it is right, and about left that it is left” (Talmud Yerushalmi, Horayot 1:1; see Resp. Melamed Leho'il 3:82, who seeks to reconcile the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds with the Sifrei). Significantly, Maimonides omits this idea in his writings, perhaps reflecting the Yerushalmi’s interpretation.

Yet, other sources support the view of the Sifrei. The Midrash Shir HaShirim Rabbah (1:18) contains a similar teaching, and Nachmanides, in his Biblical commentary, appears to accept this principle, writing that even if one knows in his heart that the Sages are mistaken, he must follow their ruling. He links this to the precedent of Rabbi Yehoshua submitting to Rabban Gamliel regarding the establishing of the calendar (Rosh HaShanah 25a).

However, as many note, that linkage is difficult, as the Talmud identifies the absolute rule regarding the sanctification of the new month as an exception, not the general rule (see R. Hershel Schachter, Eretz HaTzvi, 19; Maharatz Chajes to Rosh HaShanah; and Torah Temimah, 17, # 62). The Torah Temimahsuggests a different reading of the Sifrei based on a variant text from the Vilna Gaon, "Even if it appears in your eyes that left is right and right is left, listen to them," indicating that the issue is one of perspective rather than objective error, where the sages’ reasoning appears mistaken to the observer.

In this vein, R. Isser Zalman Meltzer explained that “right and left” were chosen precisely because they can appear reversed depending on perspective; one must recognize that from the vantage point of the sages, what seems mistaken may in fact be correct (quoted by R. Zvi Weiss, Be’er Miriam, and Divrei Chakhamim , p. 299).

This interpretation could explain another usage as well: The phrase "right and left" also appears in the description of the king's Torah scroll, which he is to read "so that his heart does not become arrogant above his brethren and so that he does not stray from the mitzvah to the right or to the left" (Deut. 17:20). The use of the same language here seems odd, as the verse is about personal observance of the Torah, not obedience to rabbinic authority.

Perhaps here also, it is a reference to different perspectives. Just as an individual's "right" is not the same as another's "right" depending on their position, the king's perspective can differ from that of the Torah's wisdom. The Torah warns the king not to become arrogant and believe his own understanding is superior to the Torah, a deviation represented by the phrase "right and left."

Another interpretation, from the Chatam Sofer, connects "right and left" to the story of Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh. When Jacob crossed his hands to place his right hand on the younger Ephraim, it appeared to be a "reversal of left and right" (Genesis 48:14-19). This teaches that even when the Sages' rulings seem contrary to expectations, they too have reasons, which is why this language is used to express the need for obedience.

Thus it emerges that there is a dispute as to whether the interpretation of the Sifrei actually means that one should follow the Sages' instruction even if it is objectively wrong, with Nachmanides taking the position that it does mean literally that, while many others assume that it means only that it appears to the questioner to be wrong but is not actually objectively so.

Notably, Yuval Noah Harari in his book Nexus claims that the view of Orthodox Judaism is that a rabbi may err in matters of his personal life but not in matters of Jewish law, and cites Nachmanides' comment as the source. However, this is a matter of dispute among the authorities.

If, indeed, if this were to be the case, it demands explanation why a mistaken ruling would deserve obedience. The core reason for this seemingly counterintuitive position is the paramount value of unity and continuity and the avoidance of communal discord. The Sefer HaChinukh (Mitzvah 496) states this explicitly: Better to endure a temporary mistake than to fracture national consensus and risk “the destruction of the religion and the division of the people”  This principle is further supported by the story of the "Oven of Akhnai" (Bava Metzia 59b), where the Sages excommunicated Rabbi Eliezer (whose minority opinion was supported by Heavenly signs, and refused to submit to the majority) to prevent "the proliferation of disputes in Israel."

This emphasis on the unity of the collective also explains Nachmanides’ position on a related topic. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 32a) discusses the principle of achrei rabim le-hatot ("to incline after the majority"). While some authorities, like Rav Hai Gaon, argue this only applies when the dissenting minority is not more brilliant or knowledgeable than the majority, the Nachmanides rejects this. He argues that even if the majority is less sharp, we follow them anyway.  This is apparently not because they have the truth, but because it is the way to achieve a clear, unified legal ruling for the nation. This aligns with his view that obedience to the rabbinic court is a means of maintaining communal peace, a principle that is so strong it overrides even a potential error. Even when majority rule may not capture the deepest wisdom, it creates an authoritative protocol that prevents chaos.

This philosophical framework suggests that halakhic authority serves dual purposes: truth-seeking and communal governance. When these objectives conflict, Nachmanides prioritizes institutional stability and unified religious practice, even at the potential cost of absolute accuracy in individual cases.

Ran in his Derashot articulates a different perspective: when the sages rule, their very decision defines the truth of Torah. Even if, from Heaven’s perspective, their conclusion is mistaken, God’s will is that Israel follow their guidance, and thus their words become binding reality (Derashah 11). The court's decision becomes correct not because of its inherent accuracy, but because God has invested the institution with decisive authority.

The Chatam Sofer harmonizes the two approaches, asserting that God deliberately granted the Torah’s authority to human interpretation, even accepting the possibility of error, so that unity would prevail over endless discord (Resp., Choshen Mishpat 191).

Nachmanides himself suggests as much, arguing that God watches over the Sages and prevents them from making true errors. He writes: "It is even more certain that you should think that they are saying about right that it is right, for the spirit of God is upon the servants of His sanctuary, and He will not abandon His faithful ones forever. They are protected from error and from stumbling." This view, shared by the Chatam Sofer, places a fundamental trust in divine providence, suggesting that while the possibility of error is built into the system, it will ultimately be avoided.

It still remains, though, to reconcile this position with the passage in the beginning of Horayot. Nachmanides himself, in Sefer HaMitzvot (Shoresh 1), acknowledges practical limitations to his principle. A qualified scholar who disagrees with a court ruling cannot simply ignore his own understanding. Rather, he must engage the court in debate, presenting his arguments. Only after full deliberation and formal rejection of his position may he accept the court's authority.

Sefer HaChinukh echoes this distinction, limiting obedience until the dissenting opinion has been fully heard and considered (mitzvah 496). This procedural requirement ensures that institutional authority incorporates rather than suppresses scholarly discourse. (See also Rabbi Shlomo Lorentz, Miluei Shlomo pp. 102–126, and the Chida in his Petach Einayim, beginning of tractate Horayot, and Sha'ar Yosef, Horayot 2b, and Chasdei David, cited in Peninim MiBei Midrasha, Shoftim 17:11.)

The Taz, in his commentary Divrei David (Deut. 17:11), suggests a different reconciliation between the Sifrei and the Yerushalmi. He posits that the Yerushalmi refers to situations where an individual perceives that the court is permitting something he considers forbidden according to his understanding. In such cases, he need not actively comply but may simply abstain through passive non-action (shev v'al ta'aseh), without this constituting rebellion against rabbinic authority, since his non-compliance is not overtly defiant. He can simply claim that he has no desire to partake in that particular matter regardless.

However, the Taz continues, Rashi's formulation (following the Sifrei) addresses situations where passive abstention is impossible—where one cannot remain inactive but must take some definitive action. In such circumstances, one must follow the court's ruling in all cases, so that his rebellion does not become manifestly apparent. (This approach is also found in the Sefer Chafetz Hashem, by the author of the Or HaChaim, Horayot 2b; and in R. Shlomo Kluger’s Resp. Tuv Ta'am V'Da'at)

This interpretation, however, is challenged by Peninim miBei Midrasha, who points to Maimonides’ formulation (Hil. Mamrim 4:1), which rules explicitly that even if a dissenting sage seeks to act stringently, following his own reasoning, it is forbidden for him to do so; if he instructs others in accordance with his view, he is considered a zaken mamre. By contrast, Tosafot (Sanhedrin 87a, s.v. v’R. Shimon b. Lakish) indicate that a sage who insists on being more stringent than the court is not classified as a zaken mamre. This creates a further complication for the Taz’s distinction.

R. Elchanan Wasserman, in his Kuntres Divrei Sofrim(end of siman 4), proposes a completely different resolution. He suggests a distinction between an error in interpretation and the outright uprooting of a law ('akirat davar min haTorah). According to this view, the Sifrei's statement applies to the power of the Sages to create new decrees that may in effect "uproot" a Torah law (for instance, the prohibition of blowing shofar on Shabbat), not to a case where they are simply mistaken about the law itself. This approach would reconcile the seemingly contradictory Talmudic passages.

In other words, according to this reading, “right and left” in the Sifrei is specifically about the Sages’ capacity to legislate beyond the Torah itself, including rabbinic decrees that effectively suspend a biblical obligation. It does not refer to the Rabbis making a mistake; they are fully aware they are contradicting the Torah, and are empowered to do so (see Yevamot 89-90).

Although R. Wasserman indicates this approach works for both Maimonides’ and Nachmanides’ understanding of the scope of the verse, this resolution appears to fit more naturally with Maimonides’ application. For Maimonides, the verse addresses not only interpretation of existing law but also the authority of the Sages to legislate protective decrees, while Nachmanides argued it was limited to judiciary authority. In this light, the words “right and left” extend the verse’s theme, emphasizing that rabbinic authority remains binding even when its enactments diverge from the Torah’s literal requirements.

For Nachmanides, however, who interprets the verse as speaking about the Sages’ interpretations of Torah law itself, this reading is difficult. However, as we have seen, for him this resolution is unnecessary; his approach remains consistent with his general perspective: the command of “right and left” requires obedience to rabbinic interpretation even when one believes it to be mistaken, for the sake of preserving unity and preventing schism.

The varying understandings of "right and left" ultimately teach that halakhic authority operates within a complex framework that values both truth and unity, both individual responsibility and intellectual integrity, and communal stability. Finding one correct approach within them is elusive, and yet the system endures; and that, perhaps, is the point.

Maimonides (Hilchot Mamrim 1:2) writes that one who does not act in accordance with the rulings of the court violates lo tasur, and specifies three categories of ruling: matters received by tradition, which are the Oral Law; matters derived through the principles by which the Torah is expounded; and matters instituted as a safeguard for the Torah or in accordance with what the period required, which are the decrees, enactments, and customs. Each carries a positive commandment to obey, and violating any of them transgresses a prohibition.

He then distributes the clauses of the verse accordingly. "In accordance with the Torah that they instruct you" refers to the enactments, decrees, and customs; "the judgment that they say" refers to what they derive through the hermeneutical principles; "the word that they tell you" refers to the tradition received one man from another. In this reading, the verse itself is the source of the authority to decree. R. Yonah writes in the same vein (Shaarei Teshuvah 3:4), and Rashi's language implies the same (Berachot 19b).

Maimonides' reading is not the obvious meaning of the text; the context describes judicial power, the authority to interpret the existing text. Maimonides has the same verse conferring legislative power as well, so that the Sages may add to the Torah and not merely construe it.

Nachmanides, in his critique of Sefer HaMitzvot, holds that the prohibition applies only to what the Torah itself has said, including matters derived through the hermeneutical principles, drawn from the plain sense of a verse, or received as a halachah leMoshe miSinai. Decrees and enactments have nothing more here than an asmachta, which, as most Rishonim understand it, is a connection drawn between a verse and a law the verse does not generate.

The Talmud (Shabbat 23a, and see Sukkah 46b) raises a difficulty with the blessing recited over the Chanukah lights, which states that God "commanded us to kindle" them. The kindling was instituted by the Sages long after Sinai and appears nowhere in the Torah. In what sense, then, did God command it? Rav Ivya answered: from lo tasur. Rav Nechemiah answered: from "ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will say to you" (Deut. 32:7).

The two answers reflect two understandings of the scope of lo tasur. Ritva (Shabbat 23a) explains that Rav Nechemiah would not rely on lo tasur because that verse can accommodate only rabbinic measures that guard or extend an existing Torah obligation, whereas the Chanukah light is a freestanding institution with no Torah obligation underneath it.

The Objections and the Stipulation

Nachmanides raises several difficulties against the position of Maimonides. The accepted principle is that a point of uncertainty in rabbinic law is resolved leniently (Berachot 21a, Beitzah 3b); yet, in Maimonides' view, these uncertainties affect practices rooted in Torah law, and should therefore be resolved stringently. Other leniencies include the acceptance of the testimony of minors in rabbinic matters (Pesachim 4b) and the relaxation of rabbinic requirements in a case of monetary loss (Shabbat154b) and for the sake of simchat yom tov (Beitzah35b).

He then invokes a passage that on its surface supports Maimonides. The Talmud (Berachot 19b) states that all rabbinic matters were attached to the prohibition of lo tasur, connecting the verse directly to rabbinic authority. Nachmanides reads it in the opposite direction, because the passage describes that connection as an asmachta. Had the Talmud understood the verse itself to generate the obligation, it would not have used the term.

The difficulty of how rabbinic law can be treated more leniently than Torah law, if it is indeed premised on a biblical prohibition, has been discussed extensively. The Lechem Mishneh cites the Kiryat Sefer, who answers that the Sages built the leniency into their legislation from the outset, stipulating as a condition of their enactments that violating a decree of theirs would not be equivalent to violating the Torah and that its uncertainties would be resolved leniently. Since the Torah commanded only that we heed the Sages, and what they said includes the instruction not to treat their words stringently, one who follows the leniency has transgressed nothing the Torah commanded. Nachmanides had anticipated this answer and dismissed it. Resp. Hitorerut Teshuvah (4:182) frames the objection more sharply. The Sages cannot stipulate their way out of a prohibition that God imposed; their entire standing derives from His command that they be heeded.

This answer is more firmly based if the rule that a Torah uncertainty is resolved stringently is itself only rabbinic, which is Maimonides' own position (Hilchot Tumat Met 9:12). In that view the Sages were not waiving a Torah stringency at all when they resolved their own uncertainties leniently. They were simply declining to extend to their own legislation a stringency that they themselves had instituted for Torah law.

There is also a reason they might have found the extension unnecessary. Where a rabbinic prohibition is protective, nothing about the prohibited item is objectionable in itself, and the point is only to keep one at a distance from something else; it is enough, in that case, to prohibit the clear instances.

The Constraint of Bal Tosif

Maharatz Chajes (Torat HaNevi'im) suggests that the Sages built leniencies into their legislation because, had rabbinic law been observed on exactly the same terms as Torah law, the line between the two would have disappeared and the Sages would have been guilty of adding to the Torah, forbidden in the prohibition known as bal tosif, "you shall not add."

The suggestion builds upon how Maimonides understands that prohibition (Hilchot Mamrim 2:9), which would presumably pose an obstacle to rabbinic legislation altogether. His answer is that bal tosifconcerns misrepresenting a law's source rather than legislating. The Torah's phrase "a kid in its mother's milk" was received as covering the meat of domesticated and wild animals but not poultry. A court that permits the meat of a wild animal in milk has subtracted from the Torah; a court that declares poultry included in the biblical prohibition has added to it. Raavad rejects this, holding that bal tosif does not apply to rabbinic legislation at all.

R. Chaim Soloveitchik was once consulted about a famine-stricken city where, during Pesach, virtually nothing was available to eat other than legumes, which Ashkenazic custom prohibits. He ruled not only that they could be eaten under such circumstances, but that refraining from them, and thereby treating a custom as if it carried the force of Torah law, would itself violate bal tosif. (R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Mesorah vol. 5, p. 13, understands his grandfather's ruling to follow from reading Maimonides as addressing observance rather than communication: what is forbidden is not misinforming the public about a law's source, which would simply be falsehood, but treating rabbinic law with the stringency reserved for Torah law.)

If maintaining the line between Torah law and rabbinic law matters as much as this account suggests, it is fair to ask how well the project succeeded. That entire works have been devoted to sorting out which laws belong to which category suggests the distinction was not always easy to apply. On the other hand, no serious halakhic discussion proceeds without first establishing whether the matter at hand is biblical or rabbinic, because the answer almost always changes the analysis.

A Prohibition of Rebellion

The Meshech Chochmah (Deut. 17:11) explains that the commandment is to heed the Sages rather than to observe the particular content of what they say. He offers a parable of a king who backs the authority of his princes. Or, more relatably, we might speak of a principal who appoints teachers. A student who defies his teacher will answer to the principal, and yet no one confuses what the teacher says with what the principal says. (See also R. Shimon Shkop, Shaarei Yosher 1:7.)

This is consistent with a qualification found already in the Lechem Mishneh and the Kiryat Sefer, that one violates lo tasur only when he rejects rabbinic authority to legislate, and not when he fails to withstand temptation. In this understanding, rabbinic prohibitions carry no Torah-level prohibition on the particular act, even according to Maimonides.

There is a view, as the Re'em records (on the Semag, Hilchot Chanukah), on which no distinction is to be drawn between a mitzvah written in the Torah and one the Sages commanded: since the Torah decreed that we heed them, one may say straightforwardly that God commanded the kindling of the Chanukah lamp.

Maimonides did not formulate the matter that way, as is evident from his language regarding the blessings over rabbinic mitzvot (Hilchot Berachot 11:3). Asking where God commanded us to light the Chanukah lamp or read the megillah, he answers from "what they say to you, you shall do," and then parses the blessing: God sanctified us with His commandments, in which He commanded us to heed those who instructed us to kindle the light. The commandment being invoked is not the kindling but the obedience.

Where Nachmanides Locates the Authority

If Nachmanides denies that rabbinic law is derived from lo tasur, the question becomes where the obligation comes from instead. As R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach notes in Minchat Shlomo (2:53:1), there must be some Torah obligation in his view as well, since otherwise nothing would obligate us at all; the two differ only in that for Nachmanides the Torah creates a general duty to heed the Sages rather than a prohibition covering each particular ruling. (This is, in fact, comparable to how some understand the view of Maimonides, as noted above.) Resp. Hitorerut Teshuvah (4:122) notes that Nachmanides himself writes that the Sages were authorized by tradition to enact and to erect fences. The difference is only in the source: Maimonides locates the obligation in lo tasur, Nachmanides in a tradition, as with the Oral Law generally. (See also Chiddushei HaRan, Sanhedrin89a.)

R. Elchanan Wasserman (Kuntres Divrei Sofrim 1:15) questions how any verse can be acceptable for Nachmanides. His argument was that a foundation in lo tasur would make leniency in rabbinic matters impossible; that should apply to any other verse in the Torah as well.

Furthermore, he argues that there is similarly no recourse to a sevara, a logically derived principle, since the Talmud indicates that such a process is equivalent to an explicit verse (Bava Kamma 46b). If so, the rule of stringency would also hold there.

The Chok UMishpat (10) addresses this second point by way of the Tzelach (Berachot 35a): reason can establish a legal conclusion within an existing framework, but cannot generate a mitzvah with Torah standing. A general recognition that the Sages ought to be heeded can therefore obligate us without making rabbinic law biblical.

R. Elchanan's own resolution turns on the difference between what God wants and what God commands. The Talmud (Yevamot 62a) describes Moses acting on his own initiative and God concurring, which establishes that a measure can express the divine will though it was never commanded. Rabbinic authority is similar. Through their scholarship and wisdom, the Sages were able to intuit the unspoken will of God from that which is written. Having conveyed that to the people, the obligation of love for God mandates compliance. Nonetheless, given that there is no specific explicit commandment, leniency remains possible. (See at length R. Pinchas Wachsman, Imrei Shefer, pp. 332-349.)

The Character of an Asmachta

R. Elchanan's resolution is compatible with the Ritva's understanding of what an asmachta actually is (Rosh Hashanah 16a). Where the Sages anchor a law in a verse, the Ritva writes, God was indicating that this is a fitting way to act while declining to impose it as an obligation, leaving the decision to the Sages. He rejects emphatically the more common understanding, in which an asmachta is a mnemonic bearing no relation to the verse's intent,; the Sages produce a textual anchor to show that they are not inventing anything, since the entire Oral Law is latent in a Written Torah that lacks nothing. (Other Rishonim, including Tosafot at Menachot 92b and Maimonides in his introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah, take the looser view. Working from the Ritva's approach, the Pri Megadim, Petichah Kollelet 1:20, distinguishes a substantial asmachta, where the verse contains a real allusion and the Sages accordingly intended their law to be treated on the model of Torah law, from a nominal one; and Nachmanides, explaining the debate over the Chanukah blessing, similarly distinguishes rabbinic measures that extend an existing Torah mitzvah, which function as interpretation, from freestanding institutions, which cannot be brought under lo tasur at all.)

Object or Person

The nature of rabbinic authority and its source bears directly on a question the acharonim discuss at length: whether a rabbinic prohibition attaches to the forbidden object (issur cheftza) or only to the person who would use it (issur gavra). Several considerations push toward the latter. First, lo tasur is a directive addressed to people, instructing them how to relate to what the Sages determine. What it generates is therefore an obligation on the person; nothing in it operates on objects at all, and a rabbinic violation amounts to defiance rather than contact with something forbidden.

Second, most rabbinic law is protective. If an item is prohibited because of what its use might lead to, the prohibition describes a risk run by the person and not any quality inhering in the thing itself, which remains, in its own right, unobjectionable.

Third, it is questionable whether the Sages could confer a status on an object even if they wished to. God, who created the world, is in a position to define an object as inherently forbidden; the Sages derive their authority from a verse telling people how to conduct themselves, which grants them no comparable purchase on reality.

This is widely understood to be the view of the Netivot HaMishpat (Choshen Mishpat 234, Bi'urim 3), addressing a ruling in the Shulchan Aruch: a seller whose meat turns out to be treif by Torah law must refund the buyer even for what was already eaten, whereas a seller of something forbidden only rabbinically must return the price of whatever remains intact but owes nothing for what has already been consumed. The Netivot explains that an inadvertent violation of Torah law still requires atonement, whereas an inadvertent violation of rabbinic law requires none and is treated as though it never occurred, and that difference impacts the refund. Many read this as holding that rabbinic prohibitions do not attach to objects at all: what is prohibited is defiance, and a person who acts unknowingly displays no defiance.

He adduces a proof from a passage in Eruvin (67b) describing what a student should do when he believes his teacher is acting mistakenly. If the question is one of Torah law, the objection is raised and examined before anything further is done; if it is rabbinic, the act is carried out first and the objection examined afterward. That procedure would be untenable, the Netivot reasons, if an inadvertent rabbinic violation carried consequences, since the Sages would then be authorizing a person to incur them.

The Netivot's position has generated a large literature both in support and in opposition. A related application appears in Tosafot (Yevamot 7b). A kohen in a house containing a corpse must leave, and Tosafot observe that where the impurity is biblical he must hurry, while where it is rabbinic he need not. The Kovetz He'arot explains that a rabbinic prohibition does not forbid the act itself but requires heeding the Sages, and one already leaving is not defying them however slowly he moves; biblical impurity is different, since the violation occurs on its own as long as he remains. This might be compared to the difference between a fire and a fire drill. People run from a fire to avoid being burned, which corresponds to the spiritual harm inherent in a Torah prohibition. In a drill nobody runs, because there is no danger in the contact itself, but everyone still leaves, because the rules require it.

The Rogatchover reaches the same conclusion (Tzafnat Pane'ach, Hilchot Chametz UMatzah 6:2, and Responsa 2:32). Torah law, he writes, takes hold in three places at once: on the person, on the object, and on the time. Rabbinic law takes hold on the person alone, because the Sages were never granted the power to legislate upon an object.

He then draws a consequence that runs against the Netivot. When a prohibition rests on the object, the object is simply forbidden, and one can observe the prohibition without any reference to the reason behind it. A rabbinic law has no such anchor, so it cannot be detached from its purpose; strip away the reason and nothing remains. This is how he explains Maimonides' ruling that a person who swallows matzah without tasting it has discharged his obligation while one who swallows maror has not. Matzah has itself become an object of mitzvah and can be consumed as such; maror is rabbinic, so the obligation consists in the experience the Sages were reaching for, and swallowing it whole misses the point. The Netivot, as commonly read, makes rabbinic law indifferent to the substance of what was enacted; the Rogatchover makes it wholly dependent on it.

R. Yosef Engel (Atvan D'Oraita 10) rejects the underlying premise. The Midrash Tanchuma (Naso 29) warns against dismissing rabbinic legislation on the grounds that it is not from the Torah, and grounds the warning in God's concurrence with what the Sages decree. If God concurs, he argues, then even granting that the Sages cannot themselves confer a status on an object, the status arrives by way of that concurrence and the object becomes genuinely forbidden. The same mechanism appears in the Talmud's treatment of the priestly blessing (Chullin49a), where R. Akiva reads "and I shall bless them" as establishing that God concurs in what the priests have done, so that the blessing is treated as though God had delivered it Himself.

The Spirit and the Letter

Much of the foregoing suggests that rabbinic law is not a single category. Some rabbinic prohibitions are protective: the act is unobjectionable in itself and is forbidden only for where it might lead. Others were legislated for their own sake, because the Sages recognized that an act shares the essential character of what the Torah prohibited though it falls outside the Torah's formal definition. In the first case they were guarding the law; in the second they were identifying something that violates what the law was striving to accomplish, even when it is not explicit in the text. Some use this distinction to delimit the Netivot (See R. Pinchas Zelig HaKohen Mandak, Vayelaket Yosef11:69). Where the prohibition is protective, the Netivot's reasoning holds, since the risk it guards against does not materialize when a person acts unknowingly. Where the Sages legislated for its own sake, an inadvertent violation should require atonement exactly as a Torah violation does.

Further, even if the Sages could attach a prohibition to an object, they need not have done so uniformly. R. Avraham Weinfeld (Lev Avraham 119) concludes that the power existed but was exercised selectively, according to their judgment of what each situation required, so that the various rabbinic prohibitions should not be assumed to work alike.

However one understands the process, it emerges that the Torah's intent is broader than what its text managed to say; the Sages discerned what could be discovered in the empty spaces and legislated accordingly, and in doing so were not adding to the Torah but conveying its total message. Rabbinic law is finally an expression of love of God, and a person who wants what God wants, and not only what God demanded, will want to observe it.

R. Yonah (Shaarei Teshuvah 3:7) puts it in terms of a landowner who builds a fence around a field he treasures. The fence is not the field, and no one confuses the two; he builds it because he cannot bear the thought of the field being trampled.

The Torah itself conveys the instruction of how we are to hear its directives. Ibn Ezra, cited by Nachmanides (Ex. 15:25), observes that wherever a form of shemiahis followed by a lamed or a beit, listening to a voice rather than hearing a statement, the verse means not the reception of the words but the grasping of their reason. The Shem MiShmuel (Ki Tavo 5672) reads the phrase "I listened to the voice of God" the same way: a voice is the inner dimension of what is said, as distinct from the surface of the statement, and one who listens that way arrives at what the Torah intended rather than only at what its words convey.

This is what the forefathers did, when they kept the Torah before it was given, as the Talmud derives from "Abraham listened to My voice," having no commandments to observe and only the divine will to discern. The Sages, in their legislation, did the same. And Nachmanides, in his comments on "you shall do what is upright and good" and "you shall be holy," makes clear that the obligation did not end with the transmission of the written text of the Torah: we too are charged with understanding the purpose behind the law and living by it, and not with the particulars alone. That is the model the forefathers and the Sages set for us, and it is the one that has sustained the Jewish mission for millennia; to live not only by the Torah's letter but by its spirit as well.

It is also among the most mysterious. The prohibition seems to be a perfect example of a "chok," a commandment whose reasoning is not rationally accessible. However, the line between a "chok" and a "mishpat" is not as absolute as it is sometimes perceived. Even the most socially relatable principles contain elements beyond human apprehension; while even the most arcane precept has been the subject of conceptual theorizing by the commentaries. Accordingly, much has been posited to explain the underpinnings of this mysterious prohibition.

Permitted Apart, Forbidden Together

The enigma begins with the nature of the prohibition. Meat is permitted, and so is milk; and yet, their combination is strictly forbidden. As such, the Talmud repeatedly describes meat and milk as a "chiddush." The term in its classical usage does not mean an interesting new idea; it means a law that stands outside the ordinary rules, one that cannot be predicted from the principles governing comparable cases.

R. Yosef Rosen, the Rogatchover Gaon, brought an extra analytical edge to the question. Is the prohibition about the combination of two opposites, or is it a case of one substance rendering the other forbidden? Is this a law against eating meat together with milk, or a law against eating milk together with meat? While he posits practical ramifications to this question, it also formulates the ambiguity inherent in the concept.

The Reluctance to Offer a Reason

Maintaining a "chok" mystique, Rabbeinu Bachya asserts that the reason has not been revealed, and places the prohibition alongside the commandment of the red heifer, the most prominent exemplar of the law whose logic is withheld. This attitude is evident as well in the comments of Ibn Ezra, who does offer a tentative suggestion while observing that no reason is necessary for a concept such as this.

A Restraint on Eating Meat

There is a comparison to be drawn with shechitah, which likewise contains non-intuitive rules, and yet many of the medieval commentators understood it as emerging from an accessible rationale, connected to the prohibition against causing animals unnecessary suffering. Shechitah, understood to be the most painless method of slaughter, becomes the only acceptable way to kill the animal. Some object to this assessment, noting that animals are killed for other purposes, for the parchment of tefillin and Torah scrolls among them, without any requirement of shechitah. If the concern were the animal's pain alone, the requirement would apply across the board.

Others suggest that shechitah addresses a combination of concerns. The consumption of meat is particularly vulnerable to corruption of the soul that could accompany a complete disregard for the experience of the animal that has become one's meal. In recognition of this reality, it is specifically meat prepared for human consumption that provokes a need for an elevated sensitivity to the suffering of the animal.

A similar dynamic is seen in regard to mixing meat and milk. If meat is indeed to be eaten, a degree of restraint is necessary. The indulgence associated with seeking to consume both delicacies at once is deemed unseemly.

Cruelty, Appetite, and Character

The suggestion Ibn Ezra offers is one of cruelty. Cooking a young animal in the milk of its own mother is a cruel act, and many of the medieval commentators understood "gedi" to denote specifically a young animal. The objection is not only that the creature is being eaten but that it is being prepared in the substance that sustained it.

Similarly, Rashbam maintains that the unrefined act of eating the mother's milk together with her young reflects an appetite that has stopped observing limits. He connects the prohibition to the law against slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day; the requirement to send away the mother bird before taking the young is often grouped with them. All three reflect the demand of the Torah that a mother and her young not be simultaneously targeted, an expression of sensitivity that impacts the character of the human being involved (similarly, see R. Yosef Bechor Shor).

Blood

Other interpretations identify the problem as a form of contact with blood. Milk, in the view of R. Meir, is blood that has been transformed (Niddah 9a), which is why it is permitted on its own; recombining it with meat restores something of its original character, and the mixture becomes subject to the concern that governs the prohibition against consuming blood.

Sefer HaChinuch and others understand the requirements of shechitah to serve the draining of blood as well as the reduction of the animal's suffering, and the prohibition against consuming blood is often read as an objection to benefiting from the life force of another creature. The prohibition of meat and milk might be built on the same foundation.

The Act of Mixing

Sefer HaChinuch grounds the prohibition in the act of combining, and rules out any connection to the eating (mitzvah 92). He refers back to his treatment of sorcery, where he explains that certain combinations are forbidden because each created thing has been given its own nature, and joining what was meant to stay separate interferes with that order. Meat and milk, he suggests, may be forbidden on the same foundation.

He brings evidence from the fact that one is liable for cooking the mixture even though he will not eat it, which indicates that the prohibition has nothing to do with any harm caused by consuming it. He is liable for eating it even where he derives no benefit at all (Pesachim 25a), unlike the other forbidden foods. Both point to the mixture itself as the object of the prohibition.

A related account of what makes the two substances incompatible draws on what each of them represents. Meat, under Jewish law and under the Noahide laws alike, comes necessarily from an animal that is dead. Milk comes from an animal that is alive. What is being kept apart, in this reading, is life and death.

The Idolatrous Practice

Maimonides offers something entirely different in the Guide of the Perplexed (III:48). The prohibition may be directed against a specific idolatrous practice, a cult that worshipped by combining meat with milk, already ancient history in his own time. He supports this partly from context, suggesting that this is why the law appears in connection with the festivals (Exodus 23:19), when such practices would have been most visible.

Two objections present themselves. The first is that the Torah already prohibits following the practices of idolaters as a general matter, so it is unclear why this particular practice would require its own commandment. The objection is not decisive, since other commandments have been explained the same way.

The second objection is more practical; tying a commandment to a transient circumstance, such as a cult that has not existed for millennia, invites the conclusion that the commandment has outlived its purpose. That Maimonides was prepared to say this of a commandment as constantly practiced as this one is part of what has made the passage controversial. Sefer HaChinuch reports the explanation and then dismisses it in a phrase borrowed from the book of Esther, that "all of it is worth nothing to him" (mitzvah 92).

Why the Mother's Milk

The language of the verse raises its own question, since the law as it stands draws no distinction between the milk of this animal's mother and any other milk. Ibn Ezra takes the language as precise: the prohibition really is about actually boiling a kid in its mother's milk, and the blanket rule exists because the origin of the milk is ordinarily unknown, so that every case is a doubt resolved strictly.

An alternative explanation of the language treats the phrasing as an instance of "diber hakatuv bahoveh," the Torah describing the ordinary case. A household with milk from its own animal that slaughters that animal's young is the likely scenario, and nothing either conceptual or normative about the prohibition follows from the description.

What Remains

The positions run the length of a spectrum. At one end is Rabbeinu Bachya, holding that the reason is beyond human reach; at the other is Maimonides, locating it in a specific historical circumstance; between them are the readings that find something ethically or symbolically relatable, whether cruelty, greed, restraint, the character the act forms, or the incompatibility of what the mixture joins.

It is not necessary to find a definitive answer for the exploration to be worthwhile. The value of the exercise lies elsewhere. One who is meticulous on a daily basis to observe all of the many demands of this prohibition and who pauses to consider the possible explanations behind those details observes them differently than one who has considered nothing at all; and that, with apologies to the Sefer HaChinuch, is worth everything.

What has to be determined is how the two stand in relation to one another. Is the prohibition of cooking dependent on the prohibition of eating, or is the dependence in the other direction? The nature of the relationship between the two has significance for a number of issues.

A Safeguard Written into the Torah

The Kesef Mishneh maintains that eating the combination is the primary offense, and that the prohibition of cooking exists in order to protect it (Hilkhot Tum'at Met 1:2). The Torah forbade the cooking of meat with milk so that one would not come to eat the mixture that is created.

In this understanding there is nothing inherently objectionable in the act of cooking considered on its own. A Scriptural prohibition is functioning here the way a rabbinic enactment ordinarily does, as protective legislation rather than as a judgment about the act it forbids.

Prohibitions of this kind are not unique to meat and milk. R. Yosef Engel assembled a list of them in his work Lekach Tov (kelal 8), gathering the cases in which the Torah forbids one act in order to keep one away from a related action, and treating them as a recognized category of Scriptural safeguard (seyag d'orayta). The prohibition of cooking meat and milk appears on that list, citing the Kesef Mishneh.

R. Moshe Sofer adopts this understanding in his Chiddushei Chatam Sofer (Chullin 108b), and uses it to account for the sequence in the Talmud's derivation: eating is listed first, though the verse is phrased in terms of cooking, in order to indicate that the prohibition of cooking exists on account of the prohibition of eating.

Maimonides appears to say as much himself, writing that Scripture saw no need to state the prohibition against eating, having already forbidden the cooking, since if even the cooking is forbidden the eating goes without saying (Hilkhot Ma'achalot Assurot 9:2). R. Akiva Eiger, in his glosses, points to the Kesef Mishneh as the explanation of these words, and the Magid Mishneh identifies the source of the ruling in the Midrash Rabbah at the close of Leviticus.

The Reverse Reading

The language of the Talmud can, however, be read the other way. The Torah forbids the consumption of anything it has declared to be an abomination, "you shall not eat any abominable thing" (Deuteronomy 14:3), and the Talmud places the eating of meat and milk within that prohibition (Chullin 114b). What the Torah condemned in this case was the cooking, and a prohibition descends upon the food that the cooking has produced. Read this way, the prohibition of eating depends on the prohibition of cooking, rather than the reverse.

R. Chanoch Henach Eigesh states the position in Marcheshet (1:30), writing that the eating of meat and milk is not independently forbidden by the Torah at all, and is generated instead by the prohibition of cooking. R. Moshe Sofer, in his comments on a later page (Chullin 113b), notes both directions without deciding between them.

R. Elchanan Wasserman, in Kovetz Shemuot to Chullin (112a), distinguishes two versions of this second reading. In the first, the fact that the Torah forbade the act shows us that the substance is inherently repellent, and it is that quality which makes it forbidden to eat; the ban on cooking is then no more than a sign of an abomination already present. In the second, the forbidden act is itself the cause of the eating prohibition, in the sense that the transgression is what renders the food prohibited.

R. Wasserman adds a practical consequence to the conceptual implications, assuming that the rule would differ between the two views where the mixture came about on its own, or through the agency of someone not subject to the command. Consequences of this kind extend beyond that case, and a number of questions in the laws of meat and milk turn on the choice between the two frameworks.

Cooking What One Will Not Eat

R. Chaim Chizkiyahu Medini records in Sdei Chemed(Ma'arechet HaBet, Pe'at HaSadeh 19) a ruling of the Yishrei Lev that a Jew may cook meat and milk belonging to a non-Jew. If the reason cooking is forbidden is the concern that one will come to eat the product, no such concern exists where the food is not his to eat in any case, and the prohibition against deriving benefit falls away along with it. The Sdei Chemed himself takes up the question at length and is not persuaded.

A Safeguard Built on a Safeguard

Torah prohibitions of eating carry punishment only where the forbidden food is consumed in a minimum quantity, the volume of an olive (k'zayit). A lesser quantity, what the Talmud calls a "chatzi shiur," or half a measure, is forbidden by Torah law nonetheless, though no punishment attaches to it (Yoma 74a, according to the dominant view of R. Yochanan). One explanation of that rule understands it as protective: small quantities are placed off limits so that one does not work his way up to a full measurement.

A nazirite is forbidden by the Torah to drink wine. He is separately forbidden vinegar, grape products, and anything soaked in grapes, and the Midrash explains that second prohibition as a safeguard for the first, since these things are not themselves the object of his undertaking (Rabbah, Naso 10). R. Yosef Teomim draws a striking conclusion from the combination of the two points (Pri Megadim, Petichah Kollelet 1:17). If the rule of half a measure is itself a safeguard, then applying it to a nazirite's grapes would mean building a safeguard on top of a safeguard, and the Torah, he writes, does not legislate a fence around a fence (gzerah l'gzerah).

The principle he invokes in general is an expression of rabbinic law, that the Sages do not, as a rule, enact a decree in order to protect another decree. R. Yosef Engel, in the same discussion in which he assembled the Scriptural safeguards, questions whether the principle can be carried over to the Torah's own regulations (Lekach Tov, kelal 8:2). One understanding of why the Sages stop at a single remove is that a rabbinic prohibition does not justify that degree of protection. Other explanations exist as well, but they share the premise that the law being protected is itself rabbinic, and it is that premise which explains the restraint. None of that reasoning transfers to a prohibition of the Torah.

A defense of the Pri Megadim can be based on a passage in Avot deRabbi Natan (ch. 2). Addressing the instruction in the Mishnah in Avot to make a fence for the Torah, it then asks for an example of a fence that the Torah made for its own words, and answers by pointing to the laws of forbidden relationships, where the Torah forbids not only the act itself but forms of contact that could lead to it. It is not immediately clear why fences made by the Torah should figure in a discussion of fences made by the Sages.

The answer may lie in the principle that, according to the Talmud, rabbinic enactments are patterned after Torah law; meaning that when the Sages legislate they legislate in the form Scriptural legislation takes. Tosafot (Chullin 104a, s.v. u'mena teimra) can be read as holding that the Sages knew, without needing any source text for it, that one does not decree a fence around a fence. It may be that they knew it from observing that the Torah's own fences work that way. (R. Hershel Schachter develops the broader version of the theme that a Torah law can sometimes be understood by examining the rabbinic law patterned after it in his Eretz HaTzvi.) In this understanding, the issue with a double safeguard would not be driven by its status as a rabbinic law. Rather, it would be a presumption that, structurally speaking, a safeguard is not built atop another safeguard, regardless of the status of that original safeguard.

Cooking an Insignificant Amount

If the prohibition of cooking is itself a safeguard, the Pri Megadim's rule should apply to it directly. A half measure could no more be combined with the prohibition of cooking meat and milk than with the nazirite's grapes, and cooking less than an olive's volume of meat together with milk should not be forbidden at all. Whether that is the law is disputed. R. Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz appears to hold that such cooking is permitted (Chazon Ish, Chullin 108), while R. Yosef Babad treats it as self-evident that it is forbidden (Minchat Chinuch, mitzvah 92).

The Pri Megadim himself, in his introduction to the laws of meat and milk, makes the question turn on a different consideration. A quantity below the threshold is forbidden because it can be combined with another to reach the threshold, and that possibility is what makes eating it a participation in something prohibited (Yoma 73b). Combining, however, may be relevant to the laws of eating alone, which recognize a fixed interval within which two acts of eating count as one, and so supply the mechanism by which two partial actions are joined. R. Tzvi Ashkenazi maintained that the entire rule belongs to prohibitions of eating (Chacham Tzvi 86). R. Yehoshua Trunk of Kutna disagrees, holding that quantities join across all prohibitions as a matter of course, and that the interval rule is a leniency rather than the opposite, and he concludes with the Minchat Chinuch that cooking below the threshold is forbidden (Yavin Da'at, Yoreh De'ah 87).

The Pri Megadim also holds that cooking which stops short of "ma'achal ben Derosai," the point at which food first becomes roughly edible, is forbidden by Torah law even though no punishment is incurred. Later authorities understand this as an example of a "half measure" in quality rather than in quantity, subject to the same reasoning about the possibility of completion. It emerges that he discusses two applications of the half measure idea to cooking meat and milk and considers them both, at least theoretically, possible. This seems to conflict with his treatment of the nazirite's grapes, in which he dismissed the possibility of applying the half measure idea due to concerns of a double safeguard. It may be that he does not accept the Kesef Mishneh's premise, and disagrees with the idea that cooking meat and milk is a safeguard.

The Minimum Measurement for Cooking

The minimum measurement itself may follow from the same analysis. The Talmud sets the prohibition of cooking at the volume of an olive (Chullin 108b), which is not self-evident. That volume is a measurement drawn from the laws of eating, where it defines what counts as an act of consumption, and there is no reason to assume that other prohibitions have the same standard. The prohibition of cooking on Shabbat, for example, does not. That the cooking of meat and milk should be governed by the measurement belonging to eating suggests that this cooking is bound up with eating in particular, as the Chatam Sofer explains. (See also Minchat Peri, and the memorial volume for the Chatam Sofer, 53.)

Cooking What Has Already Been Cooked

As noted, Shabbat has a prohibition of cooking as well, and the comparison between the two raises a further question. On Shabbat, food that has already been cooked can in some circumstances be heated again without a fresh violation. Does the same hold in meat and milk?

R. Akiva Eiger indicates that it does. He writes that meat which has been pickled in milk may still not be cooked in milk (Chiddushim, Yoreh De'ah 87). Pickling is treated as the equivalent of cooking, but only by rabbinic law, and it is because the earlier act was not Scriptural cooking that a Scriptural act of cooking remains available to still be violated. Had the meat genuinely been cooked in milk, in his reasoning, a second cooking would carry no prohibition. R. Yosef Shaul Nathanson rules in the same direction (Responsa Sho'el U'Meshiv 4, 1:41), and Rabbeinu Gershom indicates the same (Chullin 108b; see also Minchat Peri). An intermediate position holds that a second act of cooking is prohibited where the meat and the milk were first cooked separately, and not where they were cooked together.

The comparison to Shabbat is more complicated than it first appears. Recooking in that case distinguishes between different states of food. A solid that has been cooked may be heated again, while a liquid that has cooled may not, and heating it is a fresh violation. The prohibited case may actually determine the default, rather than the exception, and the question becomes why a second cooking should count on Shabbat and not in meat and milk. One distinction that is drawn is that on Shabbat the Torah objects to the performance of a labor, so that the act is forbidden whenever it occurs, while in meat and milk the Torah objects to a result, so that an act of cooking which is not the initial creation of a result is not the act the Torah forbade.

When Two People Cook Together

A second principle drawn from the laws of Shabbat raises a similar question. Where two people together perform an act that either of them could have performed alone, both are exempt (Shabbat 93a). Whether that exemption operates in the laws of meat and milk is left unresolved by the Minchat Chinuch (mitzvah 92) and the Yavin Da'at (Yoreh De'ah 87). R. Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg questions why the matter should be in doubt at all, given that the exemption is a general rule of Torah law, and answers that in meat and milk, where the concern is the result rather than the act, the exemption may have no application, since it is a rule about what counts as performing a forbidden act (Mishmeret Chaim). R. Natan Gestetner holds that no such exemption is found in meat and milk (Responsa Lehorot Natan 3:9).

The distinction fits the analysis above from the other side. If cooking is only preparation for eating, it becomes intelligible that the Torah would be concerned with the act as such.

Fowl and Milk

The Torah's prohibition is stated as cooking a kid, meaning a young goat, in its mother's milk, and the term is understood to extend to the meat of domesticated animals generally. Fowl is excluded, having no mother's milk, and so the prohibition of fowl in milk is rabbinic rather than Scriptural.

Maimonides rules that the Sages forbade the eating of fowl in milk but not its cooking, which remains permitted even by rabbinic law (Hilkhot Ma'achalot Assurot 9:4), and the Shulchan Arukh records the same (Yoreh De'ah 87:3). Most of the medieval authorities hold that the cooking is forbidden as well, reading the Mishnah's statement that "all meat" may not be cooked in milk (Chullin 103b) as covering the rabbinic prohibitions along with the Scriptural one, and therefore as forbidding the cooking of fowl in milk together with its consumption (Rashba; see also Ritva).

In addition to the textual objection, there is a conceptual one as well. As mentioned earlier, rabbinic enactments are patterned after Torah law, and the Torah forbids the cooking of meat in milk alongside the eating, so one would expect the Sages to have done the same with fowl (Kereti U'Pleiti; Yam Shel Shlomo).

R. Moshe Sofer answers on the basis of a principle of the Taz, itself an innovation. The authority of the Sages to legislate extends to matters on which the Torah is silent, but not to matters the Torah has expressly permitted, where a rabbinic prohibition would stand against an explicit Scriptural allowance (Orach Chaim 588:5; Yoreh De'ah 117:1; Choshen Mishpat 2). Fowl, he argues, falls into the second category. The word "kid" is what excludes fowl from the prohibition, so the Torah has permitted the cooking of fowl in so many words, and the Sages were not in a position to forbid it (Responsa, Yoreh De'ah 82).

The analysis above suggests a different answer. If the prohibition of cooking meat in milk is a safeguard for the prohibition of eating, and the prohibition of fowl is a safeguard for the prohibition of meat, then forbidding the cooking of fowl in milk would mean protecting a safeguard with a safeguard, and Maimonides may have declined to do so. This is not as ambitious as the Pri Megadim's claim, which concerns a Scriptural fence built around a Scriptural fence. It is enough here to say that the Sages did not enact protections for laws that are themselves protective in character.

Cooking Where No One Will Eat, and Related Issues

Two later questions test the premise from different directions.

The first concerns a candle made from meat and butter, and whether lighting it constitutes a forbidden act of cooking (Shaar Efrayim 38; Eliyah Rabbah, Orach Chaim 671). If the prohibition applies only where there is reason to fear that the mixture will be eaten, it should not apply to a candle at all. R. Shalom Mordechai Schwadron permits it after the fact where the candle has already been lit (Responsa Maharsham4:122). R. Ben Zion Nesher permits it outright, on the strength of a convergence of the uncertainties discussed above, whether cooking is prohibited below the minimal measurement and whether "cooking after cooking" applies in meat and milk, a convergence of this kind generally allowing for a lenient resolution. He adds that kindling may not constitute cooking in the first place (Responsa Even Pinah 92).

The second was the topic of a query sent to R. Dov Berish Weidenfeld, the Tchebiner Rav, from the rabbi of Lublin (Responsa Dovev Meisharim 30). A chemist in a laboratory wished to test a chocolate to determine whether it contained a mixture of meat and milk, and the test required heating the sample, which would be an act of cooking meat and milk if the mixture is in fact present. The Tchebiner Rav permits it on the basis of the Kesef Mishneh, and supports the ruling from the law of searching for chametz. The Sages required the search on the night before Passover, and one who neglected it must search on Passover itself, by which time the chametz he is looking for is already forbidden to him. The Talmud raises the concern that a person searching for food he may not eat will eat it, and answers that this will not happen, since the entire object of his activity is to destroy what he finds (Pesachim 11a). The chemist stands in the same position. The purpose of the cooking is to identify a forbidden substance so that it can be avoided, and the concern that gave rise to the prohibition is absent. R. Hershel Schachter reports a similar ruling in the name of R. Moshe Soloveitchik, based on the position of Maimonides (Beit Yitzchak, 1995, p. 12).

The Conceptual Implications of Safeguard Status

R. Nachum Weidenfeld, who was actually the brother of the Tchebiner Rav, raises an objection that bears on his brother's position, as well as much of what has been cited above (Responsa Chazon Nachum 92). Granting that the prohibition of cooking is protective in character, the Torah has established it as a standing prohibition in its own right, no longer contingent on the law it was given to guard. Its protective character may explain why it was legislated; it does not license reasoning from that character to practical conclusions, or relaxing the prohibition wherever the danger happens to be absent. The authorities surveyed here evidently did not accept that, since nearly every ruling discussed above proceeds by reasoning from the purpose of the prohibition to its scope.

The prohibition of cooking meat and milk is unusual, though not unique. The Torah itself included within its regulations safeguards for its own principles, and in doing so it modeled for its adherents the need to protect and cherish those principles. This is a task the sages of the Torah picked up, and with the authority vested in them by a verse in this week's parashah (Deuteronomy 17:11, as Maimonides has it in Hilkhot Mamrim 1:1-2), they applied their diligence, balanced perspective, and wisdom toward ensuring the continuity and integrity of Jewish practice.

Further, this mandate is not simply a single act, but represents a broader value expressing itself in multiple ways. Accordingly, the Sefer HaChinukh, in his codification of this as a recognized commandment (#527), includes a number of other actions. Among these is a requirement specific to siege warfare: When an enemy population is enclosed for that purpose, the enclosure must not be absolute, but rather a "fourth wall" must be left open so that anyone who wishes to can flee and their lives will be spared. 

This is a widely accepted idea with a somewhat obscure source. Not explicitly stated in the Pentateuch or even in the Talmud, it is found in the Midrash (Sifrei Matot 31:7, piska 157), where it may be the opinion of a single sage, R. Natan. Invoked in the context of the battle against Midyan, it is presented after the majority view which appears to disagree, although there are variant texts, thus leaving the matter somewhat ambiguous. 

Nonetheless, it features prominently in the writings of both Nachmanides, who listed this as an independent commandment (#5), and Maimonides, who did not, but did codify it as unquestioned Jewish law (Hilkhot Melakhim 6:7). 

Nachmanides provides an explanation for this rule: It is to teach that we must act with compassion, even against enemies in wartime. Similarly, the Radbaz asserts that this rule is “from the paths of the Torah, that all of its ways are peace”. Notably, this option is being provided to a population that has already rejected an overture of peace.

Nachmanides then provides a second reason. If the enemy is boxed in with no way to escape, they will fight even more ferociously to the very last man. This will inevitably result in higher casualties on both sides. Allowing an escape route will make the conflict far less bloody. 

The historical resonance of this second rationale is powerful. Just a few days ago was the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which followed an agonizing decision process on the part of the United States. The ferocity of the Battle of Okinawa, in which it was clear the Japanese were prepared to fight to the death, and its staggering toll on both soldiers and civilians, loomed heavily in the American decision to deploy the atomic bomb. The alternative, an invasion of mainland Japan, was predicted to involve casualties on both sides in the millions.

The Abravanel, in his biblical commentary, provides an additional rationale, drawing from a close reading of the verse (Deut. 20:21) “And if it does not make peace with you but engages in war against you, you may lay siege to it.” The present tense usage suggests the relevant population is actively engaged in war; those who are not, and wish to flee, should be given the opportunity to do so. As R. Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg notes (Hilkhot Medinah, II, p. 181), the Abravanel presumably did not invent this derivation, but rather had a tradition that this was an early rabbinic teaching.

However, there appears to be a significant dispute as to when this obligation applies. Jewish law possesses a number of categorizations for wars. The two primary ones are: a milchemet mitzvah, or a mandatory war; and a milchemet reshut, which might be translated at the moment as a discretionary war. Defining the concepts accurately is challenging, in particular the second one, given that war, with all of its tragic consequences and necessary suspension of general peace-time protections, is presumably only undertaken under very pressing situations. The notion of a war that can be considered “discretionary” in any sense of the word is surprising. (The Talmud also mentions a third possibility, a milchemet chovah, a term that may convey necessity but could be introduced to redefine either of the other two through comparison.) 

What falls into which category is subject to extensive debate both in the Talmud and in the later rabbinic literature (see Sotah 44b; Rashi, Sanhedrin 2a; for a very thorough survey and analysis, see R. J. David Bleich, Contemporary Halakhic Problems, III, pp. 251-292). To speak very broadly, and to draw in particular on Maimonides' formulation (Hilkhot Melakhim 5:1), it is reasonable to say that the mitzvah category includes the biblical mandates to do battle against Amalek and the seven Canaanite nations, as well as fighting against an enemy who attacks (i.e., a defensive war).

A milchemet reshut, again addressed very broadly, would include wars for territorial expansion or to otherwise enhance the nation's defensible status, and taking pre-emptive action to reduce the military power of a nation suspected of planning aggressive action for the future. While one Talmudic passage (Berakhot 3b, and Sanhedrin 20b) indicates that such a war may even be approved for economic reasons, commentaries explain that the situation at hand was one in which military threats had been inflicted upon the Jewish people through economic means (see R. Reuven Margoliyot, Margoliyot HaYam and Nitzotzei Ohr, and R. Moshe Dov Wolner, Resp. Chemdat Tzvi, IV, 59). 

This last point highlights some of the fluidity between the categories. Defensive wars, which in post-Biblical times would make up the lion's share of Israel's military conflicts, exist upon a continuum between the two categories. This is reflected in the formulation of Maimonides. Commentaries struggle with the fact that his assertion that a war against attackers would be deemed a milchemet mitzvah is intuitive and understandable, but is not explicitly based on the Talmud; while it seems to correlate to a statement that is, regarding the reduction of military force that may potentially pose a threat, although that is characterized as a milchemet reshut.

Resolving that tension may require recognizing that the terms are not inherently absolute but reflect a spectrum of relative concepts that are compared to each other. (See, for example, Resp. Mekom Shmuel, 8.) With that understanding, given that the nature of defensive wars varies along a spectrum, with some more immediate and definitive, and others less absolute and perhaps even pre-emptive, a theory that explains how some can be seen as mandatory, and some can be seen, at least in relative terms, as discretionary or rather subjectively decided, can begin to emerge. 

However, as a matter of Jewish law, this subjectivity is problematic, as the two categories are not merely a matter of semantics but are governed by different rules, thus necessitating an assessment to be made. Most significantly, a milchemet reshut can only be undertaken with the permission (perhaps another meaning of the designation “reshut”) of official bodies that do not exist today, such as the Sanhedrin, a king, and the Urim V’Tumim (see Hilkhot Melakhim 5:2). Accordingly, for a war to be deemed legitimate in contemporary times it must be acknowledged as a mitzvah. 

There are a number of other differences between the two in application, which contribute to the necessity of classification. This highlights a significant difference between Jewish law on the one hand and general philosophy and international law on the other.

The latter systems recognize two distinct concepts: Jus ad bellum, which refers to the justification for going to war in the first place; and Jus in bello, which are the rules regulating the conduct within war. These are considered to be separate from each other. The first does not impact the second, meaning that the same rules of conduct are applied regardless of justification. 

This is mostly for reasons of legal policy. According to the ICRC, "If it were otherwise, implementing the law would be impossible, since every party would claim to be a victim of aggression. Moreover, International Humanitarian Law is intended to protect victims of armed conflicts regardless of party affiliation. That is why jus in bello must remain independent of jus ad bellum."

Jewish law, which is a system of divine morality, is not subject to the same constraints and indeed does correlate the two. Accordingly, the two categories of war, which are defined by their justifications, are indeed governed by different sets of policies. 

Into this maelstrom enters the "open fourth wall" requirement. There is significant ambiguity and debate as to which category of war this rule applies.

Put succinctly, Maimonides does not mention any distinction, leading some to understand that he would apply it in all cases, although some commentaries differ. Nachmanides, in contrast, explicitly uses the term reshut in applying his distinct commandment, and the Chinukh includes it in that language as well, although the later commentary, Minchat Chinukh, challenges his basis for the distinction. 

Given that this obligation has been associated with the mandate to make overtures for peace, one would assume there should be a correlation, although there is ambiguity on this point as well. Maimonides (Melkahim 6:1; but see Sefer HaMitzvot 170) applies that commandment to all wars (notably even the war against Amalek). Thus, if he indeed does not distinguish regarding the fourth wall obligation, the linkage between the two obligations is as expected. For some other authorities, however, the two applications do not necessarily line up as neatly. 

Accordingly, R. Shlomo of Chelm, in his commentary Mirkevet HaMishnah concludes that if all wars, for Maimonides, have this rule, then this is true even when the nation is under attack. This conclusion troubled R. Yitzchak Yedidiah Frenkel (Derekh Y’sharah II, 51) who argued that not every milchemet mitzvah need be treated equally, and it may be necessary to draw distinctions even more finely.  Regarding the original biblical mandates of warfare against specific nations, it may be understandable that escape routes should be provided. However, when there is an ongoing aggression, that group is classified as pursuers seeking to kill (rodfim) and must be stopped absolutely. It should not be so obvious then that escape should be provided in the same way, even if both examples superficially share the designation "mitzvah". 

Nonetheless, he considers the possibility that Maimonides' language does require that conclusion and endeavors to understand why. He suggests that despite the fact that preventing the pursuit would indicate a need to definitively eliminate the pursuers, it is possible that our inclination towards peace and our desire to reduce the intensity of conflict is so significant that it dominates nonetheless. 

Notably, R. Yehoshua Menachem Ehrenberg (Resp. Dvar Yehoshua, II, 126) felt that the application of the open fourth wall rule must be variable, and in a way that cannot neatly be correlated with the mitzvah and reshut designations, but in a directly inverse fashion from that of R. Frankel. He also posits two versions of the mitzvah category connected to the purpose of the military mission. Regarding Amalek and the like, the Torah has identified them as direct dangers (if they do not make peace), and thus they should not be allowed to escape. In the case of an isolated defensive war, the goals may be accomplished even if the enemy is allowed to escape, and the rule should apply. (See also R. Yehudah Gershuni, Kol Yehudah p. 197.)

Similarly, he argued, a milchemet reshut may not automatically have this policy applied; it would depend on the specific goal of the individual campaign. Further, he posited, it may be that the entire policy is no longer necessary in the modern era, for a surprising reason: escape was necessary when the alternative was everyone would be killed. In the contemporary context, it is now accepted that the besieged population can surrender rather than be killed. As such, escape routes are not necessary as an expression of mercy.   

This debate played a major role in a modern-day dispute. In 1982, during the Lebanon War, the IDF laid siege on Beirut. Then-Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren insisted that the open fourth wall policy be applied (see Meishiv Milchamah, pp. 240-265). R. Shaul Yisraeli intensely disagreed. His argument was largely not only about reshut/mitzvah, although he analyzed that issue at length (see Techumin, IV, pp. 25-36). Rather, the question was: is Israel attacking, or being attacked? In the latter case, it is impractical to apply the package of behaviors that are connected to making peace overtures. In that situation, the matter is purely a decision for military experts. (See also the analysis in Kol Yehudah, p. 210)

Very significantly, the argument between them was focused on how the actual terrorists were to treated. Both agreed that non-combatants had to be allowed to flee. Further, as R. Shlomo Brody details (Ethics of Our Fighters pp. 241-242) both positions were substantially beyond what have historically been the demands of general philosophy and international law, where absolute sieges had long been customary.

This, we have seen, has been the case from time immemorial. The corpus of Jewish law has blazed the trail of establishing the balance between compassion for enemies even in the context of warfare, and the need for successful and effective just wars that protect its citizens. Finding that balance has required an ongoing back-and-forth over the centuries of analysis, interpretation, and application, all in development of values rooted in the text of the Torah. 

It is, by its nature, exceedingly complex, and thus will always require this learned interaction between deeply committed proponents for its realization to be refined and perfected. In the space of these few verses, the Torah intersperses commandments requiring, on the one hand, the prioritization of peace, the expression of mercy towards enemies, and care with plant life; and on the other, the need to be absolute in eliminating those who would continue to pose a threat to the Jewish people and to the world (see Sam Derekh, pp. 98-99). It is as if to say the risk of forgetting one vital priority while attending to the other is always present, and can never be neglected. Answering this call, in a violent world, will never be easy and cannot be done perfectly. Reality demands that there will be a cost, as much as we are bidden to minimize those costs. The effort is by nature deeply aspirational, always striving for more. 

It is in this context that the recent war is situated. One particularly confounding aspect of accusing Israel of causing hunger in Gaza is the unique nature of the situation. In the debate regarding the “open fourth wall”, it emerges clearly that this was a step that would precede bringing in food, as R. Goren stressed the obligatory opening was only to go out, not for bringing in. (See also R. Zvi Sheilat, Medinah, Halakhah, V’Kavanot HaTorah, pp. 320-321).  In this case, the fourth wall is being closed off by a different country, Egypt, and that general closure, in multiple ways, is being supported by the other nations against Israel's will. Israel is being constrained to work against multiple obstacles while literally being forced against a wall in unprecedented fashion. This prompted much internal debate, a matter greatly complicated by the unreliability of news reports and unclarity of the facts on the ground, and vexing logistical challenges in the distribution of aid. The unprecedented and unacknowledged inversion of the situation created a context that deserves more careful judgment.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter that Israel faces constraints and obligations no other nation is asked to bear; aspirational standards have always been part of Israel’s ethos. The noble heroism of the soldiers of the IDF, who take on additional risk, and too often make the ultimate sacrifice, so that they can better protect the civilian population being used as human shields by vicious terrorists is a magnificent realization of the multiple values the tradition has taught over the centuries. The challenge of facilitating aid in the environment of these multifaceted and shifting obstacles, all while continuing to search for increasingly imperiled hostages, fight a brutal enemy subject to no restraints, and protect their soldiers and civilians of both sides is a continuation of this legacy.  

Writing in a different context, R. Shaul Yisraeli (Amud HaYemini, pp. 194-195), in struggling to understand how the existence of war as a concept reshapes moral principles, ultimately suggests that it operates on a principle similar to dina d’malkhuta dina, the notion recognizing the law of the land as binding (comparable approaches were posited by the Chatam Sofer, Resp, CM 44, and Rav Kook, Resp. Mishpat Kohen,143). Just as that rule, according to some interpretations, emerges from a social contract of mutual consent, the fact that the world has always conducted its international affairs through warfare conveys its legitimacy. As such, the evolution of laws of war have enhanced the morality of the conduct within that structure, through the same mechanism.

Further still, every gesture toward the sanctity and preciousness of life contributes to an evolving understanding, that one can hope will slowly have an impact as well. For now, protecting life often means that aggressive and harsh measures must be taken against those who threaten it, and tragically, inevitably impacting those who are innocent as well. But the belief in a perfectible world means that we can continue to strive against all obstacles to model a humanity in the image of God, and that someday, it can be different.

The imperative of “you shall call out to it for peace” is stated in the context of actual warfare between na­tions. Still, it has been classically understood, at least homiletically, as a call to internal harmony and respect. (See, for example R. Yaakov Etlinger, Minchat Ani; R. Chaim Kasar, Ketz HaMizbeach to Devarim; Dr. Avraham Arzi, in Machanayim, no. 123, p. 28-33; and R. Yitzchak Raphael, Torah SheB’Al Peh, vol. 21, pp. 9-11.) These two applications converge during wartime, as conflicting visions and evolving understandings of how to balance the necessary values inevitably lead to dissent and mutual accusations and recriminations. It is thus exceedingly important that attention be paid to this value of peace, not only externally but internally as well.

It is noteworthy that one of the sources for the prohibition of lashon hara is found in next week's Torah reading: “Guard against any evil thing (davar, indicating dibur, word; Deut. 23:10)”. Significantly, the context of the verse is specifically one of wartime. When this derivation is relayed in the Talmud (Ketubot 46a), it is in the name of the same R. Natan, who taught of the need to open the fourth wall and show compassion to our enemies at war. He also recognized the harm that can happen internally in those moments of great vulnerability, when negative sentiments and possibly unfair characterizations are hurled, when motivations are attacked, and when conclusions are drawn with insufficient basis. 

These laws command us to focus on what we do know. We know that the people of Israel have been barbarically attacked by brutal enemies who continue to threaten and to hold hostages in the cruelest of circumstances. We know that the army of Israel has accomplished, through the grace of God, unprecedented battlefield successes under unparalleled pressures while exercising unequaled sensitivity to human dignity and well-being. We know that the Torah sets a standard for the Jewish people beyond that of any other nation. May the continuing efforts to reach greater realizations of that standard serve as the actual "call to peace" that is soon answered by the entire world. 

Others, however, have argued that empathy is a confounding influence, with Paul Bloom going so far as to provocatively title a book “Against Empathy.” Even Rutger Bregman’s more upbeat “Humankind: A Hopeful History” argues that humanity’s core strength is not empathy, which “blinds” and makes people “less forgiving,” identifying exclusively with victims and generalizing about adversaries. Even empathy advocate Batson acknowledges that high-empathy individuals are more likely to help the subjects of their empathy “at the expense of others.”

That argument has since sharpened considerably. Gad Saad’s “Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind” arrived as an instant bestseller, touted by Elon Musk, and the phrase itself has taken on a life beyond the book, turning up frequently in political commentary. Saad’s claim is that a compassion aimed reflexively at whoever has been presented as the victim, and insulated from any question of who that party actually is or what he intends, becomes a mechanism of self-destruction, in which the instinct for self-preservation is itself recoded as a moral failing.

Over these past three years empathy has been effectively weaponized: images curated and figures supplied by the party that started the war, and embedded itself among the people it claims to represent, and countless thousands of decent people whose natural instincts have been exploited and manipulated, with innocent and good people all over the world paying the price.

One need not, however, go as far as Bloom and Bregman and be “against empathy.” Empathy is a crucial Jewish value and is indeed a necessary trait, as a bulwark against cruelty and an impetus toward kindness. One who feels empathy will be moved to build houses for the homeless, and that is a wonderful thing. Further, empathy is an end unto itself, rather than a means. A condolence letter is an act of empathy that says I am with you, and nothing more, and that is a wonderful thing, too.

Where empathy falls short is as a policy maker, especially for those who carry the weight of complex decisions that can affect the lives of millions, and that requires dealing with people who are not necessarily what they seem and will exploit any weakness. A trait that must be cultivated for its own sake cannot simply be dispensed with when it proves an unreliable guide to action.

In contrast to some others, Saad is not maintaining that empathy is inherently harmful, a position which runs counter to human instinct. Rather, the argument is that distinctions, both qualitative and quantitative, must be made within empathy. In this week’s parashah we find an attitude toward empathy that is not merely discerning, but uniquely complex.

Parashat Re’eh contains a number of harsh punishments for things that threaten the well-being of the community. Strikingly, one of the harshest of these consequences is conveyed with the following terminology: “in order that the Lord turn back from His fierce anger, and give you compassion, and be compassionate with you, and multiply you, as He swore to your fathers” (Deut. 13:18).

The clause seems foreign to everything around it. Where is compassion to be found in the context of such a judgment?

The Or HaChaim answers that the promise is addressed to those who carried out the sentence. The act itself, he writes, “gives birth to the nature of cruelty in the heart of a person.” He supports this with testimony he seems to have gathered himself, from the professional executioners who served at the pleasure of the sovereign in the Morocco of his day: they reported a great craving at the moment of killing, until the root of compassion was severed in them and they became cruel. That same danger, he warns, is embedded in those charged with the act here. Hence the assurance that God will give them compassion, “even though nature will give birth in them to cruelty”: the Source of compassion will pour into them the power of compassion anew, in order to nullify the force of cruelty born in them from the deed. And the second phrase, verichamcha, teaches that so long as a person remains within the category of a cruel nature, God conducts Himself toward him in the same measure, for God extends compassion only to the compassionate.

The Malbim reads the verse in the same direction and develops it further. Precisely because one might take this to be a cruel judgment, the Torah assures them that God will place in their hearts the trait of compassion; for they act not out of cruelty but because of the command of God, as the verse continues, ki tishma bekol Hashem Elokecha. God is full of compassion, and this very severity grows out of His compassion, to burn out evil from the land and to turn back His anger, until the judgment itself is performed from the side of compassion, and Heaven therefore deals compassionately in return, for in the measure a person measures, it is measured back to him.

Three assumptions are operating here at once. Harsh action is sometimes genuinely required; and it exacts a cost from the one who performs it, in character, and in conscience. Nonetheless, that cost is not fated to be permanent; it is possible to act with necessary severity and still emerge with one’s compassion intact, provided the act was undertaken for the right reasons and one remains aware of what is at stake.

That last assumption is the one the current argument has almost entirely lost sight of. The public conversation offers a choice between a compassion that refuses to acknowledge necessity and a hardness that treats the question of moral cost as weakness. The verse declares this a false choice.

The trait of rachmanut (often translated as compassion) can be identified with empathy and is indispensable for Jews; the Talmud says that one who is compassionate toward others is thereby known to be of the seed of Abraham, a point it derives from this very verse (Beitzah 32b). But it also cannot exist by itself; the midrash warns that those who display rachmanut to the cruel will thereby act with cruelty to those who truly need rachmanut (Kohelet Rabbah 7:16).

Crucially, the Talmud elsewhere, again citing this verse, actually identifies three traits as the marks of this nation, such that one who possesses all three is fit to join it (Yevamot 79a): two being rachmanut and the practice of chesed, or kindness. These may seem identical, but clearly, if they were, they would not occupy two spots. They are, instead, complementary. Rachmanut is the instinct to act on behalf of those who appear to be suffering; chesed is the benevolent act itself, having been rationally verified as the right course of action, in consideration of all factors in balance. The first is needed to move one to act; the second is to assure that the act is good.

The third criterion is bushah, shame, which may correlate to a sense of humility. This is the controlling factor of the other two; the recognition that it’s possible to be wrong, that one’s initial instinct may not provide the whole picture, that even the most virtuous impulse may be misguided. If the loudest cheerleaders of Hamas, be they heads of state, podcasters, or Ivy League students, had more bushah, the world might actually be a better place.

The concern of the Or HaChaim, though, is not addressed to them. Nearly three years of war have placed tens of thousands of soldiers in exactly the position the verse contemplates, required to do what the situation demands and entitled to worry about what doing it will make of them. The Torah’s response is neither to deny the necessity nor to minimize the danger. It is a promise: that one who acts out of obligation rather than appetite, who keeps the larger picture of justice and mercy ceaselessly in focus, will have his humanity and compassion preserved.

Which is why the epithet chosen this week by Abdul El-Sayed, fresh off his primary victory in Michigan, describing the Israeli government as “bloodthirsty,” is not merely false but completely inverted. Bloodthirst is the very quality the verse addresses: the attribute that characterizes those who seek to eradicate every Jew from the planet, and the one the tradition promises to eliminate from those who cling to the vision of its esteemed founder.

Don’t give up on empathy. It is a powerful force, and vital for the world’s future. And that is exactly why it is so important that we get it right.

Accordingly, Maimonides (Sefer HaMitzvot, Shoresh 8) assumes the Talmudic application of the verse to be an asmachta, a rabbinically assigned allusion rather than the actual meaning of the text, which is a predictive warning as opposed to a prohibition. He is not thereby denying the existence of a biblical prohibition; he simultaneously indicates that one emerges from elsewhere in the text, leaving open the question of what that alternative source is. Parashat Re'eh contains what appears to be the leading candidate.

The verse reads, "You are children to the Lord your God; do not cut yourselves, and do not make a bald patch between your eyes, for the dead" (Devarim 14:1). On its plain level this is a prohibition of certain mourning practices. The Talmud (Yevamot 14a), however, perceives a dual meaning in the phrase lo titgod'du, referring not only to physical cutting but condemning as well the creation of agudot agudot, separate and distinct groups within the community. Whether this is to be taken as an actual interpretation of the text, or rather as an asmachta, is a matter of some dispute.

R. Tzvi Zesherovsky (Minchat Tzvi) observes that there is a thematic connection between the two prohibitions derived from this verse, self-mutilation in mourning and communal fracture. The linkage is suggested by the beginning of the verse, "You are children to the Lord your God." The Jewish people realize that as children of God, all that occurs is ultimately for the best; thus, there is no reason to grieve in a drastic, inappropriate manner. So, too, the Father of the Jewish people would be anguished by unnecessary division among His children. (A similar understanding of this part of the prohibition is found in R. Yitzchak of Volozhin, Peh Kadosh.)

The latter version of the prohibition is stated in relevance to halakhic practice: "Abaye said... such as two rabbinical courts within one city, one ruling like Beit Shammai and one like Beit Hillel;... Rava said, like one rabbinical court in a city, half of the court ruling like Beit Shammai and half like Beit Hillel."

Two Torahs or Two Camps

The rishonim present varying perspectives on the essence of this prohibition. Rashi, and many others, identify the problem as giving the appearance that the Jewish people are governed by two Torahs, that each group possesses its own body of halakhah not shared by the other. This is problematic for several reasons, one of which is that it presents an idolatrous image. Also, as R. Shmuel Landau observes in his father's Responsa Noda B'Yehudah, blatant divisions among Jews create a desecration of God's Name.

Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim 12:14), however, seems to understand the motivation to be avoiding the conflicts that inevitably arise when separate groups are formed, at odds with each other. This is also the position of the Sefer HaChinnukh (mitzvah 467). R. Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (Responsa Meishiv Davar 1:17) observes that Rashi's understanding appears more consistent with the discussion in the Talmud, where this objection is raised in relation to the various dates established for the reading of Megillat Esther in different cities. Grounded in an inherent difference in the status of the cities, this variation is unlikely to evoke controversy; however, a case could be made that it does give the appearance of two Torahs.

The Ritva (Yevamot 13b) comments on the Talmudic derivation in a manner amenable to both reasons. The interpretation is suggested by the beginning of the verse: "You are children to the Lord your God." All of Israel is children to one God, as opposed to that which may be indicated by multiple Torahs, or by a divided nation.

Some point out that the dispute of Abaye and Rava itself may hinge on these two rationales. Abaye is troubled by two rabbinical courts within one city; Rava is not, and requires a single court divided against itself. If the concern is the appearance of two Torahs, two separate courts should be unobjectionable, as it is understood that distinct courts issue distinct rulings within their own jurisdictions. If, however, the concern is the conflict generated when a community fragments, then the fact that this is all one community means the difficulty remains even where two courts are involved.

"Mishum Machloket"

The conceptual distinction finds support in Maimonides' formulation. His language is revealing: he does not describe the prohibition as being engaged in machloket, but rather as acting mishum machloket, "because of" or "on account of" dispute. The Radbaz (Responsa, vol. V, 1384) builds on this phrasing, concluding that if an action will not actually lead to machloket, if it can be undertaken without generating conflict, then the prohibition does not apply, even if the action creates visible differentiation within the community. This also explains why even those who did not initiate a dispute may nonetheless be held responsible for perpetuating it: they are acting mishum machloket, for reasons connected to the conflict itself rather than for independent, constructive purposes.

The Question of Custom

As R. Berlin observes further, if the central concern is the appearance of two Torahs, then divergences in matters of custom should not pose a problem, as it is accepted as a matter of course that different people have different customs. However, if the fear is the risk of conflict, it is an unfortunate reality that issues of custom are not immune from this danger. Accordingly, Maimonides and the Sefer HaChinnukh, mentioned previously as proponents of the latter rationale, do apply the prohibition to issues of custom, as does R. Moshe of Coucy (Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, prohibition 62). The Magen Avraham (Orach Chaim 493) also appears to agree with this position. R. Berlin notes elsewhere (Meromei Sadeh, Yevamot 14a) that despite the obligation to adhere to personal custom, derived from "do not abandon the Torah of your mother," this prohibition overwhelms that imperative. This question bears great relevance to issues of communal prayer.

R. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, in a lengthy responsum (Responsa Seridei Eish, vol. 2, Yoreh Deah 11 and 12) that includes a critique of R. Berlin's position, concludes that while lo titgod'du is indeed limited to matters of actual law, there exists an additional prohibition, specifically addressed to customs, that prohibits differentiated behavior in situations of potential strife, thus mandating adherence to minhag hamakom, "the custom of the place." This prohibition is a formidable one that R. Weinberg gives much attention to.

Returning to lo titgod'du, R. Chaim Mordechai Roller (Responsa Be'er Chaim Mordechai 4) suggests that a distinction exists between long-standing, established customs and those more recent and less entrenched. Some authorities considered the variant customs of Ashkenazim and Sefardim to be so well-known and acknowledged as to be untouched by this prohibition.

Mitigating Factors

Along these lines, many rishonim suggest that a mitigating factor present in the multiple options for Megillah reading is the fact that no side believes the other is acting in an incorrect or prohibited manner, rather according to a prearranged and understood differentiation. It would appear that the primary concern is thus the fear of discord; if each side recognizes the other's right to act in a different manner, this consideration is nullified. This guideline is adopted by R. Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld in his responsa (Salmat Chaim), as well as by others. Accordingly, R. Yehudah Leib Litwin (Sha'arei Deah 2:7) and R. Yechiel Michel Epstein (Arukh HaShulchan, Orach Chaim 551:22) rule that for issues that are not halakhically indispensable, this prohibition is not a concern.

Similarly affected by this evaluation is a situation in which the entire population agrees to allow two modes of practice. The consensus would apparently obviate concerns of strife, but the appearance of two Torahs would still be a danger. The latter position is considered normative by some, while others disagree.

Further, if the issue is disharmony, it may become less problematic if one or both of the parties is unaware of the divergency. So, too, if the variation is not obvious; thus, leniency is more easily conceivable for actions done in silence. R. Yehudah Lansdorfer (Responsa Me'il Tzedakah 50), however, forbids multiple practices in the same area even when not simultaneous to each other; apparently, his concern is more with the appearance of two Torahs. A similar position is held by R. Aryeh Leib of Metz (Turei Even).

When Both Rationales Are Operative

Of course, as R. Moshe Halberstam (Responsa Divrei Moshe 35) observes, it is very possible that both proposed rationales for the prohibition are accepted as halakhah. If this is indeed the case, then the stringencies of both would be operative; effort must be taken to avoid any differentiation that risks either causing a conflict or giving the appearance of two Torahs.

R. Halberstam's son-in-law, R. Mattisyahu Deutsch, independently adopts a similar perspective in his responsa (Netivot Adam 5), but suggests a distinction that affects the above mentioned discussion in reference to customs. Granted, adopting a dual stringency approach would forbid divergence in customs, as the risk of conflict is present, even if the "two Torahs" concern is not. However, in the case of long established customs that have become identified with a particular group, the entrenched nature of these customs will eliminate any basis for dispute. Thus, such divergence should be permitted, even within an enclosed area, as neither risk is present. To support his point, R. Deutsch cites Responsa Emek haTeshuvah (112), who posits that the prohibition of lo titgod'du is only binding on individuals who are empowered to act differently; in other words, are not bound by any preexisting and established practice.

In any case, it appears that at least Maimonides, if not others, finds this prohibition to be the source for the Torah's opposition to conflict. Some suggest that Maimonides prefers this as a source to the other possibilities because, as interpreted by the Talmud, it indicates that the prohibition is applicable even when the quarreling centers on matters of halakhah. R. Moshe Weinberger proposes that inherent in this prohibition is an obligation to attempt, through dialogue, a consensus that will eliminate the need for any divisions.

The multiplicity of sources offered to serve as the fundamental prohibition of disharmony, or the imperative of spreading peace, by their variation belie their true implication, which is in actuality an imposing unity of opinion. The unhesitating dedication of rabbinic thinkers toward locating the precise scriptural authority for this principle displays the almost instinctual realization that communal strife is wholly incompatible with a society defined by Torah values. In such a light, halakhic authorities, while ever cognizant of the multiple factors comprising the complexity present in all of life's challenges, continue to place these concerns at the forefront of rabbinic responsibility.